New Kaiser genomics lab opens in San Jose using robots for faster, cheaper routine genetic tests

Liza Knez, a senior technologist at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Regional Laboratory demonstrates the use of a cell free DNA analysis unit on Monday, April 1, 2023, in San Jose, Calif. The new genomics lab will expand diagnostic testing capabilities and provide early screening and intervention for its 4.5 million members.

Dr. Jason Rosenbaum, a molecular genetic pathologist at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Regional Laboratory walks through a section fo the new facility on Monday, April 1, 2023, in San Jose, Calif. The new genomics lab will expand diagnostic testing capabilities and provide early screening and intervention for its 4.5 million members.

The lab, in its old digs, had doing about 30,000 tests a year, but all the new robotic equipment has allowed the lab to double its output, without hiring any new staff, according to Rosenbaum. They lab is planning to do over 60,000 of those tests this year, and will expand to 160,000 tests a year by 2029.

They are also not the biggest or most complicated-looking devices in the building, the size of a small office printer, but they do “arguably the most sophisticated medical testing humans have ever created,” Rosenbaum said.“People may see advertised on TV, which is a unique American feature of our health system,” Rosenbaum said. “A lot of the targeted drugs that are advertised in sporting events like the Super Bowl, are for mutations that are specific to a given kind of cancer.

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

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