Volume 40 Number 3 | June 2026
Summary
Automation is reshaping laboratory medicine, but it cannot replace the critical thinking, judgment, and expertise of trained laboratorians. This article argues that despite staffing shortages and advancing technology, skilled professionals remain essential for ensuring patient safety, troubleshooting issues, and interpreting complex, nuanced results that fall beyond the capabilities of automated systems.
A Battle for the Future
Ali Murphy, MHSA, MLS(ASCP)CM, caPM, ASCLS Director
Automation is the way of the future. Our jobs are all going to be replaced by smarter and smarter automation where the need for a qualified laboratorian is a thing of past. Technology already exists where the need for phlebotomists is no longer needed, although not common. The future of laboratory medicine is technology. At least that is what we are told.
On the other hand, we are also told that the need for quality laboratorians is on the incline, with the silver tsunami on the horizon. We expect to see more retirements and an increase in geriatric patients with complex needs. This is leading to more job openings than there are trained individuals ready to join the workforce. With the pressure of the staffing shortage looming over administrators’ heads, the inclination to invest in “smarter” automation is rapidly changing labs across the country.
How is the average laboratorian supposed to feel? They spend countless hours training, studying, and demonstrating the necessary didactic knowledge just to graduate. Then the laboratory professional must complete clinicals and sit for a board certification. This profession is intense, tuition is costly, and those who accomplish the feat deserve to be proud of their achievements and not fear that they will soon be replaced by automation.
However, the rhetoric of the lab environment, from administration, industry partners, and other external pressures, is that our prestigious jobs will soon be replaced with automation that will be smarter, faster, and less prone to error than trained professionals. What are hardworking, dedicated, intelligent professionals to think? As much as we’d like to believe that automation and technology will assist laboratorians in their work, it is hard to deny that the search to reduce lab staffing is an ever-present concern.
Here is the truth of the matter, no piece of equipment will have the intelligence to make the critical, on-the-fly decisions. A mathematical program may be able to identify changes in QC from run to run. However, it is going to take a long time before a smart machine will be able to hear the slight difference in the way it is running or if there is a sudden shift in patient results that may represent a change in the moving average. If the instrument can identify those minute changes, will it be able to perform the required maintenance tasks to put the instrument back in operational order? That would be one highly specialized piece of equipment if it requires no human interaction to recognize it is out of compliance and self-correct.
“We have the background and ethical mindset to ensure results coming from the lab are of the highest quality.”
Diligent laboratorians are trained to quantify the smallest change in how a system is running. Typically, this occurs before the instrument flags itself as having a potential problem. Even if instrumentation is advanced enough to load samples, QC, calibration, or verification materials without human intervention, the need for skilled employees to monitor the welfare of the instrumentation and be able to repair the instrument will never go away. The identification of this change is critical, but the most important part is the intervention of a highly skilled laboratorian.
The weight of patient safety is a driving stressor that every lab and laboratorian shoulders when working in the lab. Monitoring and approving all quality control, calibration, verifications, and other studies needed throughout the year is a mandatory requirement. However, there will never be a replacement for human eyes, judgement, and scrupulous attention to detail for these required laboratory investigations. Computerized software may tell the technician that the values fall within normal statistical ranges, but no technology will ever be able to troubleshoot and perform the necessary tasks to fix the problems.
Automation and specialized computerized software live in the world of black and white. Lab and laboratory testing can live in the gray zone. Laboratorians, although they may not enjoy the gray zone, are trained for that reason. We have the background and ethical mindset to ensure results coming from the lab are of the highest quality. For that reason, there is no future where laboratorians will be obsolete in medical labs. New, smarter technology will creep into laboratories, but highly trained medical laboratory professionals will always have a job to ensure patients are receiving the best care possible.
Ali Murphy is an LIS Technical Specialist at HealthPartners in Minneapolis, Minnesota.