NSW Health Pathology’s Liverpool laboratory is getting a major upgrade with the arrival of the brand new state-of-the-art laboratory automation system.

A brand new pathol­o­gy depart­ment at Liv­er­pool Hos­pi­tal is near­ing com­ple­tion as part of the Liv­er­pool Health and Aca­d­e­m­ic Precinct – a $790 mil­lion rede­vel­op­ment of Liv­er­pool Hos­pi­tal and a new edu­ca­tion and research hub.

Dr Michael Maley, Local Pathol­o­gy Direc­tor – South West­ern Syd­ney said this was a fan­tas­tic mile­stone worth celebrating.

“Our micro­bi­ol­o­gy team are excit­ed to work in the new lab­o­ra­to­ry – it’s been many years in the plan­ning, and they look for­ward to imple­ment­ing new work­flows as we con­fig­ure and opti­mise the automa­tion instruments.

We hope to com­bine the ben­e­fits of automa­tion with the ben­e­fits of Fusion, which will deliv­er our statewide lab­o­ra­to­ry infor­ma­tion sys­tem. All of these excit­ing devel­op­ments will improve patient out­comes, dri­ve effi­cien­cy, and deliv­er greater sat­is­fac­tion for our hard-work­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry staff”, Dr Maley said.

NSW Health Pathology’s Senior Oper­a­tions Man­ag­er South West­ern Syd­ney, Parth Nana­vati said the inte­grat­ed mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary lab­o­ra­to­ry has been built to meet the com­mu­ni­ty’s needs using next-gen­er­a­tion automa­tion and robot­ic technology.

“The world-class lab­o­ra­to­ry oper­ates 24 hours a day, sev­en days a week and is cru­cial to detect­ing, diag­nos­ing, treat­ing dis­ease and man­ag­ing long-term health con­di­tions,” Parth said.

“The new NSW Health Pathol­o­gy lab at Liv­er­pool Hos­pi­tal will ser­vice a grow­ing pop­u­la­tion in South West­ern Syd­ney, so it needs equip­ment that can deliv­er high-qual­i­ty results for patients and meet increased vol­umes of micro­bi­ol­o­gy diag­nos­tic testing.”

Liv­er­pool Micro­bi­ol­o­gy is an extreme­ly busy depart­ment and the vol­ume of test­ing is ris­ing. In the finan­cial year 2018/19, the micro­bi­ol­o­gy team processed 203,181 sam­ples and dur­ing 2023/24 that increased to 283,203 samples.

“With grow­ing demands on micro­bi­ol­o­gy ser­vices, there is a tremen­dous need for inno­v­a­tive solu­tions to deliv­er time­ly and accu­rate results for a range of infec­tious dis­eases,” Parth said.

The new sys­tem ful­ly auto­mates bac­te­r­i­al cul­ture inves­ti­ga­tion into patient spec­i­mens, work­ing to trans­form lab­o­ra­to­ry oper­a­tions and min­imis­ing time between load­ing the sam­ple and incu­ba­tion of cultures.

“It allows pathol­o­gists, sci­en­tists and tech­ni­cal offi­cers to work seam­less­ly through auto­mat­ed work­flows from plate labelling to inoc­u­la­tion, incu­ba­tion, imag­ing, cul­ture read­ing and results report­ing,” Parth said.

It has a robot­ic track sys­tem which allows plates to trav­el through the sys­tem at a faster rate and acquires up to 22 images of each plate with a high res­o­lu­tion 25-megapix­el cam­era for advanced image qual­i­ty. This pro­vides detail not vis­i­ble to the human eye.

These enhance­ments will allow effi­cient and improved work­flows and enable sci­en­tif­ic and tech­ni­cal staff to per­form oth­er tasks, such as in-depth result review, tech­ni­cal data analy­sis, qual­i­ty con­trol mon­i­tor­ing, trou­bleshoot­ing and the abil­i­ty to remote­ly read cultures.

The impor­tance of hav­ing state-of-the-art lab infra­struc­ture was evi­dent through­out the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and is a key enabler for the health system’s readi­ness and pre­pared­ness to respond to future pandemics.

The team is set­ting its sights on an envi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able future, by invest­ing in tech­nolo­gies that reduce ener­gy con­sump­tion and emis­sions and con­tribute to NSW Heath get­ting to net zero.

“The new lab automa­tion sys­tem will help us achieve this green vision because it has a small­er foot­print, uses less pow­er through ener­gy effi­cient prac­tices. With few­er mov­ing parts, we are using less elec­tric­i­ty and have a more effi­cient trans­porta­tion of the plates around the system.

“Pathol­o­gy is an essen­tial sup­port ser­vice for the Liv­er­pool Hos­pi­tal and the upgrade of pathol­o­gy ser­vices is com­ing at a cru­cial time for the hos­pi­tal. NSW Health Pathol­o­gy is proud to be embrac­ing new tech­nolo­gies and set­ting the bench­mark in patient care for South West­ern Syd­ney com­mu­ni­ties, and the peo­ple of NSW,” Parth said.

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