A couple of days ago my class went on another field trip. This time we went someplace close to BCIT. We visited the BC headquarters of LifeLabs, which is only a 10-minute walk from campus. LifeLabs is a Canadian company that serves communities (as opposed to labs in the hospital which serves mainly in-patients). Other than LifeLabs, the other major private clinical lab in BC is BCBiomedical.
My first impression of LifeLabs is how automated everything is. The lab area is full of instruments processing all sorts of samples that come in from their patient clinics as well as other communities such as senior homes. Whereas in a typical hospital lab there are 5 areas of the lab (Chemistry, Microbiology, Hematology, Transfusion/Blood Bank, and Histology), LifeLabs only has the first 3, plus a dedicated Molecular Diagnostics area which not all hospitals have (i.e. they may integrate some molecular testing within the 5 core disciplines, but not have a separate area for it).
We were taken around those different sections of the labs, and basically for most of the areas, nestled in between instruments are cubicle-like sections where the MLTs have their desks with their own computers and microscopes to verify the results from the instruments. It was very much like working in a corporate office, except with expensive instruments and biohazardous substances everywhere.
While I knew that it was easy to automate certain tests such as those in Chemistry, my classmates and I had no idea that you could also use instruments to semi-automate tasks such as cell counts in Hematology and urinalysis in Chemistry! I think this discovery was the highlight of the field trip for most of us. At BCIT and during practicum we are required to do these manually by looking at a regular light microscope, but at LifeLabs they have special equipments that can take pictures of what is seen under the microscope. The instrument is linked to a computer and this way the MLT can evaluate cells and other particles by looking at the computer screen. They can also zoom in and out of the pictures as well as share them with doctors and other MLTs to get a second opinion. This saves a lot of headaches, both from straining our eyes and from uncertainty over what we’re looking at. I hope this type of technology will be implemented in all clinical labs in the near future, since it will make microscopic analysis less subjective.
Overall I was impressed by the way LifeLabs runs; their lab is nice and modern with plenty of fancy technology to make MLTs’ jobs easier, since they probably have a bigger budget than hospitals. I also heard that they do not have graveyard shifts, unlike hospital labs which run 24/7. Unfortunately I’m not doing my practicum at a private lab (and I’m kind of jealous of those who are) so I won’t be able to enjoy these perks, but it’s nice to know that there is another alternative if hospital labs don’t work out for me!
