The Regional Molecular Genetics Service (RMGS) at St Mary's Hospital, Manchester, is using a Tecan Freedom Evo liquid-handling workstation for fully automated DNA extraction.
The Freedom Evo liquid-handling workstation is being used in combination with Chemagen's nucleic isolation technology.
Supplied by Chemagen's UK distributor Auto Q Biosciences, the integrated system is housed within a Class One biological safety cabinet and provides walk-away processing of up to 24 samples in a single run.
Kudrat Rahman, business development director at Auto Q Biosciences, said: 'The RMGS required a robust solution capable of fully automating its DNA extraction process.
'Although several other manufacturers were able to provide this, the RMGS needed a very reliable system capable of performing the extraction with minimal alteration to its existing protocols,' he added.
Stuart Bayliss, project manager at RMGS, said: 'The system runs for eight hours a day, five days a week, and is proving to be very reliable.
'We are currently processing approximately 6,000 whole blood samples a year using the platform, and are now looking into automation of DNA extraction processes for saliva and cell culture samples to further increase our productivity.'
