Published: October 2025
Medically reviewed by:
Rebecca Rosenberger, MMSc, PA-C
Maximize your lab's potential with workflow optimization
Presented by Carolyn Miller, MLS (ASCP), and Jessica Murphy, MLS (ASCP)
Every laboratory professional wants a smooth workflow that allows them to focus on crucial testing processes that benefit patients. They can achieve this with optimized workflows that unlock their lab’s full potential. Watch our continuing education webinar (click on the graphic below) from Lab Week 2025 that dives into how Phadia™ Laboratory Systems can make greater efficiency a reality for any lab.
Presented by:
Carolyn Miller is an ASCP Certified Medical Laboratory Scientist with more than 19 years of laboratory experience. At Thermo Fisher Scientific, she is focused on supporting laboratory customers in achieving their goals through customized need-based analysis studies.
Jessica Murphy has been an ASCP Certified Medical Technologist for more than 14 years. She has experience in specialized and clinical labs, and at Thermo Fisher Scientific is an advocate for the lab.
Gaining efficiencies and making the most of your resources
Precision, accuracy, and speed — these are non-negotiable expectations for every laboratory, but they result in operational and financial pressures that can affect day-to-day activities. In fact, diagnostics represent just 2-3% of healthcare expenditures, but they can impact over 70% of clinician decisions.1,2
To thrive in today’s conditions, clinical laboratories must gain efficiencies and make the most of their resources. They need tailored solutions that take into account an individual lab’s space constraints, staffing levels, testing capacity and more. As you'll see in this Lab Week 2025 on-demand webinar, workflow optimization is the key to unlocking savings in terms of time and cost, and it drives greater throughput for labs.
The value of Workflow Advisory Service
The first step to optimization is leveraging the Phadia™ Workflow Advisory Service, a comprehensive assessment of a lab’s processes that identifies ways to improve efficiency and reduce waste. Through quantitative measurements of instrumentation and physical space plus qualitative staff interviews, the Workflow Advisory Service team gets to know an individual lab and its particular needs.
Following a full evaluation, the advisory team will make workflow recommendations that can identify solutions for your lab's specific needs. The recommendations are customized to the lab's specific challenges, which can allow a range of solutions, including:
- Transition separate allergy and autoimmune laboratory testing platforms to one integrated system.
- Recommend the right combination of instruments and software management applications.
- Provide shared system reagents that don’t require matching lot numbers and that can be used across allergy and autoimmune diagnostics.
Another benefit of the Phadia Laboratory Systems is the comprehensive test menu with master isotype calibration curve technology. In the webinar, Carolyn Miller highlighted how this reduces the time and costs associated with calibration and leads to less variability between results. Carolyn also provided an example in the webinar to help visualize the difference in utilizing discreet well testing vs. a 96-well plate ELISA methodology. Using fewer wells directly translates into cost savings, less waste to dispose of, and more patient-provider satisfaction thanks to efficient, high-quality result reporting. From saving money to reducing environmental impacts, our technology enhances efficiency while delivering outstanding patient care.
"By optimizing time management and streamlining processes, labs can enhance their productivity, reduce operational cost, and accelerate the scientific discoveries, ultimately translating into significant financial savings and competitive advantages."
--Jessica Murphy, ASCP Certified Medical technologist
Streamlining operations with the right software
Workflow optimization goes beyond testing processes themselves — it also encompasses the activities that make testing possible, namely, instrument service and inventory management. As laboratory professionals know, these “behind-the-scenes” functions are critical to maintaining productivity in any lab.
Phadia™ Prime software, for example, connects to your laboratory information system and laboratory automation system. With the Phadia™ LabCommunity application, these systems can communicate with the Thermo Fisher Scientific service team to report and diagnose instrument issues. Tech support can remotely diagnose problems and reduce the burden on lab staff to resolve issues with minimal downtime.
Phadia™ Stock Manager is another innovative tool that tracks Phadia reagents throughout a lab. The software provides a helpful printout of exactly what needs to be ordered and in what quantities, which are customized for each lab. It standardizes the ordering process, thereby saving time for lab staff. Inventory levels are customized for each lab.
Enhancing efficiency for improved operations
Workflow optimization can make day-to-day processes easier for staff and more financially advantageous for labs as a whole. It also drives increased throughput, which means more test results and faster response times for providers and patients. So, while workflow changes may seem intimidating at first, they can ultimately result in better outcomes for clinical laboratory professionals and the patients they serve.
With Thermo Fisher and Phadia Laboratory Systems as your partner, we can help you maximize your clinical laboratory’s workflow while aiming to reduce costs and turnaround time. The goal is to realize greater testing capacity and better use of your resources, both of which can improve the working environment for employees and the crucial diagnostic services that providers and patients need.
