Future
Looking to the future, the new laboratory edifice has created the necessary conditions to allow further automation and integration of various laboratory activities. This process will need to be continued, since the decreasing numbers of laboratory technicians graduating year on year, has already led to a shortage of technical staff on the labour market. This shortage risks being enhanced in the coming years as many older members of staff reach retirement age. It is therefore important to help develop new techniques and implement these in clinical practice by participating in research projects that are less labour intensive and lead to the generation of more relevant information about disease conditions or risks of complications. There is hence a bright future for more advanced partition procedures and materials which permit simultaneous analyses of a large number of proteins or DNA sequences.
This, as well as the growing impact of IT on the laboratory’s operations and the increased quality criteria, strengthens the demand for highly qualified technical or scientific staff, e.g. in computing.