The locally owned medical laboratory Express Lab recently unveiled its new million-dollar automated system to manage and track medical samples.

Express Lab is owned by the Rocky Mountain Diabetes Center and runs blood-sugar testing for it, but also does testing for local medical offices and patients who come on their own seeking basic blood work. The company also has locations in Pocatello and Rexburg but only its main lab, at 3910 Washington Parkway in Idaho Falls, was automated.

Automating the medical lab system involved doubling the lab's space in the building and computerizing the majority of the work done. Lab manager Lori Leask said that the company, which runs a quarter of a million medical tests every month, is the first of its kind in eastern Idaho to be automated.

"We are very eager to be on the cutting edge of technology," Leask said.

Major tests done by the lab include cholesterol, blood sugar levels and evaluating kidney and thyroid levels. The automation allows those results to be processed up to 30 percent faster without increasing the number of staff needed.

The new system was installed in the lab in April by Ortho Diagnostics, which provided the machines at a discounted price. The series of machines can uncap the sample vials that are loaded on one end, move them along a conveyor belt to the machines that run testing and analysis, and return the vials with a new cap on the other end. Lab technicians are still needed to prepare and load vials but otherwise spend most of the time evaluating what the test results say.

"It makes my team more efficient. They can focus on the scientific part of their job, the part they were trained to do," Leask said.

She also said the system limits the risk of contamination or misplacing a sample, as the vials remain on a conveyor belt with RFID tracking for the entire time they are in the lab. The system also can retrieve tubes that need additional testing and re-insert them into the line.