SinS - Abstract

Abstract Information :

When automation first dawned in the analytical community in the 1980s, it was mostly focused on basic liquid handling, supplying only sample introduction capabilities to the rising hyphenated techniques. Once the benefits of an analytical automated approach became more tangible, the lure to expand automation to the still unexplored aspects of the analytical workflow was inevitable. With its complexity and time requirements, sample preparation offered the perfect automation challenge to tackle. Being often heavily affected by human error and drastically impacting data quality, sample preparation benefits significantly from the implementation of automated steps. Nevertheless, due to the nature of certain analytical workflows in combination with the possible technical limitations, automated sample preparation may encounter some hurdles. On the other hand, in the many instances where automated sample preparation is successfully optimised and implemented within the laboratory, the focus unsurprisingly shifts to the next unautomated step up the analytical workflow ladder, such as sample handling. As for sample preparation though, automated sample handling may present challenges due to the variety and diversity of sample matrices and sample sizes. The crucial question is: what can automation deliver successfully, and which boundaries automation cannot overcome yet? Truth is that with increasingly larger datasets to be mined and progressively more complex chemical space to be unravelled, harnessing the analytical power and time-saving capabilities of automation are not only a need anymore but are slowly becoming a must for many research groups within the analytical community. This talk will focus on answering this question by first setting the scene and showcasing the most advanced tools that automation can currently offer the analytical community for automated sample preparation and sample handling. It will then share some of the latest innovative stories of collaboration with the bioanalytical community, featuring automation for One Health. This overview will highlight which limitations were faced and when the translation from the manual to the automated approach thoroughly succeeded in delivering robust and cutting-edge bioanalytical solutions.