The Face of Laboratory Equipments and Laboratory in 2020

According to latest research reports on laboratories and laboratory equipments, just like there is change in the physical environments, so also there are changes in our perception of the future and accordingly there is every chance the labs of the future will change. It is reported that advanced technologies, cost of operation, staffing and funding, are the main factors that will drive the lab design changes in 10 years from now on.

In 2007, in a "Lab of the Future" supplement for Advantage Business Media, in a reader survey, it was reported that more than half of the respondents stated that the most important technical issue in the designs of the future laboratory was "right sizing" of the lab. A similar survey in 2009, where 66% of the respondents stated that the bench space size was the most important issue in future lab design. In another survey performed in November 2009, it was the cost factor which took the lead with 59% responding to it, while lab size had gone down even below instrumentation, funding, staffing, regulations and technology change.

Clearly, the present feature chosen for designing the laboratory of the future depends a lot on the current environment. Maybe the recession in past years influenced the survey responses. The results also depend on what technologies are changing and how fast.

In a current survey of Laboratory Equipment, Ian Jardine, Vice President of Global R&D for Thermo Fisher Scientific, San Jose, CA, said that what was supposed to take 20 to 30 years initially would now take just 10 years. Advances in electronics, computer software, using of new materials will highly influence the laboratory and laboratory equipment changes over the next 10 years. Some of the major changes that will be seen by 2020 are as follows:

• Improvement in Diagnostic capabilities
• Improvement in data analysis
• Proper software with respect to system operation
• Integration of production labs into the processes
• New automation and robotic implementations
• Lab designs based on biosafety and energy use
• Computer focus
• Improved communication systems
• Environmental isolation
• Advances in instrumentation
• Advances in equipment technologies
• Cost reduction etc.

According to researches, by 2020, with the changes as mentioned above, laboratories and laboratory equipments will have greater instrument capabilities, simplified operation, more responsibilities, and more automated operations. In 10 years, that is, in 2020, most lab experiments will be performed from the office over the Internet, and you will essentially see a clean room lab.

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