A state-of the-art superlab the size of a football pitch is being constructed beneath the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham.

Housed on Level -1 of the landmark building, the laboratory will have the capacity to carry out nine million ‘bits, bugs and blood’ tests per year.

It will offer a level of automation never before seen in the UK, with pneumatic tubes carrying samples from around the hospital to the lab, where they will travel along a conveyor-belt track through processing, analysis, storage and inventory in a completely cybernated process.

The Microbiology, Haematology and Biochemistry labs are currently split across the Selly Oak and old QE sites but from 19 April 2012 they will all go live in the new purpose-built department.

They are the final clinical services to move into the new hospital following a series of phased transfers since June 2010 and will be re-branded Labs@QEHB.

Paula Hytch, Pathology Group and Business Manager, said: “This state-of-the-art department will put the Trust at the forefront of laboratory innovation. It is built to meet our vision to become the number one lab in the region and, ultimately, the UK’s research powerhouse.”

She added: “The new labs will be using a fully-automated tracking system developed in the USA, Germany and Japan and some of the things we’ll be doing on the tracks have never been done before.

“They will increase the Trust’s testing capacity and deliver reliable results with even greater efficiency to benefit patient care.”

The clinical and biomedical scientists working in the labs often hold the key to saving lives and confirming important diagnoses.

At UHB, these unsung heroes of the patient care pathway not only provide a high quality, cost-effective service and clinical expertise to the Trust, but also deliver a full laboratory service to other local hospitals including the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, and specialist services across the West Midlands region. And, for some tests, the department is the only national referral centre.

Jacquie Roper, Lead Biomedical Scientist, Clinical Laboratory Services, said:

“People don’t see us because we’re not on the frontline and until now we have been quite a disparate service split across the three sites.

“As we all come together in one purpose-built facility in the new QEHB our capacity will increase from around six million tests per year to nine million.

The through-put of samples will be quicker and with fewer manual interventions there’s less scope for potential error.

“As our patient community grows and the hospital brings in more activity from other sites, this new equipment will enable the labs to handle the increased demand for diagnostic tests without slowing down the testing process.”