Your assessment is more or less spot on. We are replacing many pipetting steps with electric and magnetic manipulation of samples on a surface.
Traditionally these operations when done manually (or even on other automation) are done inside tubes. When these operations are carried out inside tubes you have many limitations: you end up using a lot of tips, when pipetting manually some workflows require special techniques to pipette handle the samples. These operations are also extremely painful when do them over and over again -- very tedious and very easy to make a mistake.
Yes we have seen increase in throughputs relative to human. Most humans (often) process samples in batches of 8 / 12 samples. To give you a sense of the length of the workflow in a lab it can range from two hours to two days. The Callisto system can process anywhere from 1 - 24 samples for many workflows and is software controlled. It not only eliminates the manual steps: it provides at least 3X the throughput with 15 mins setup time, provides reproducible results and improves quality.
Traditionally these operations when done manually (or even on other automation) are done inside tubes. When these operations are carried out inside tubes you have many limitations: you end up using a lot of tips, when pipetting manually some workflows require special techniques to pipette handle the samples. These operations are also extremely painful when do them over and over again -- very tedious and very easy to make a mistake.
Yes we have seen increase in throughputs relative to human. Most humans (often) process samples in batches of 8 / 12 samples. To give you a sense of the length of the workflow in a lab it can range from two hours to two days. The Callisto system can process anywhere from 1 - 24 samples for many workflows and is software controlled. It not only eliminates the manual steps: it provides at least 3X the throughput with 15 mins setup time, provides reproducible results and improves quality.