Although new and innovative technology has enabled more and more laboratory testing to occur at the bedside or physician’s office, the central laboratory is hardly threatened with extinction. National data on testing volumes suggest that medium- and large-sized laboratories are busier than ever, and the huge range of their capabilities, including gold-standard diagnostic testing and the capacity for large numbers and types of tests, assures them an abiding and pivotal position in the Clinical Diagnostics world.

This is also true for immunoassay systems, which combine high-throughput automation with the wide applicability of immunoassay technology. The immunoassay is an analytical technique that employs antibodies and/or antigens to detect and measure a wide variety of analytes, including drugs of abuse, therapeutic drugs, hormones, plasma proteins, enzymes, nutritional factors, and markers of disease.