Being Able to Walk Away

"What does it take for a new technology to catch on in the labs?" Derek Lowe asks at In the Pipeline. First, he says that it has to actually be useful; secondly, it shouldn't be "useful but annoying." For that latter category, Lowe says that automation is often the driving factor, and that signs of failure include lack of automation or poorly designed automation. Good automation, he adds, allows the user to put in the samples "and walk away." "That phrase 'and walk away' is the key idea behind good lab automation. You shouldn't have to stand in front of a machine to make sure that it's going to do what it's supposed to," Lowe blogs.