Talk:Masahide Sasaki

The Clinical Chemist: Masahide Sasaki, MD, PhD
- The creator of modern laboratory automation \check

- died September 23, 2005 due to cancer \check

- Has wife Tokyo, and three children: Mika, Kyoko, and Masanori. \check

- born in 1933 in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan \check

- graduated from Yamaguchi Medical School in 1961. During 1965, he served as an internist for the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Casualty Committee. Several years later, in 1967, he was appointed the Chief of the Clinical Chemistry Department at Kawasaki Hospital. In 1970, he did a fellowship in the United States at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, IL, which gave him exposure to the US medical system. Two years later he became an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine at Kawasaki Medical School and rose quickly in the academic ranks to become a Full Professor of Laboratory Diagnosis in 1976 and, ultimately, Vice President of Kawasaki Paramedical College.""fessor of Laboratory Diagnosis in 1976 and, ultimately, Vice President of Kawasaki Paramedical College." 7check

- He was appointed Professor and Director of the Department of the Clinical Laboratory at Kochi Medical School, Kochi, Japan in 1981. There, he developed his automation system

- He collaborated with industrial partners (who?) and commercialized his products

- He published many papers from 1981-1999

- "The most notable publication was a monograph and primer on laboratory automation sponsored by A&T Corporation, Yokohama, Japan."

- "Masahide first lectured outside Japan when he spoke on clinical laboratory automation to a standing-room only audience of 900 people at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry in Atlanta, GA, in July 1989." This introduced laboratory automation to the West for the first time, and it sparked great enthusiasm.

- "Masahide served on the scientific committee for the Association for Laboratory Automation from 1998 until 2003. In 2001, the Association for Laboratory Automation presented Masahide his first international award, recognizing his contributions to clinical laboratory automation. Masahide presented numerous lectures in Europe and the United States until his retirement in 2003."

- Founded the Cherry Blossom Symposium in 1998 to bring together leading figures in research and industry to talk about laboratory automation over tasty Japanese food. He led this along with Dr. Jun Imamura, Dr. Kyoko Takeda, Mr. Masaaki Nishida, and Mr. Katsumi Ogura.

- Note: good photo which might be open access?

Robotic Laboratory Automation
- "Sasaki (16) has designed robotic vehicles that move about the laboratory, returning empty specimen racks to the central specimen- receiving area of the lab."

- his lab had the greatest degree of robotics integration as of 2002, and was seen as a "prototype of robotic laboratories"

- "In his laboratory many labor-intensive laboratory procedures have been automated by use of a variety of robots. Patients’ specimens are transported to the robotic system via conveyor belt (16). After sample accessioning and centrifugation, samples are placed in numbered racks that, in turn, are placed on conveyor belts at the front end of the laboratory, to be transported to the site of analysis. Thus the samples are transported while the robots remain fixed in the center of a table and sample the specimens as they arrive into the robot area. Samples are then automatically prepared for ABO blood testing and AIDS screening by two modified D-Tran RT-3000S industrial robots (Seiko, Osaka, Japan). The results of the completed serological tests are read by a technician, using an automatic reader, and passed on to the laboratory computer. The complete analysis is performed without the aid of a technologist, except for the verification of the final results. "

maybe? Nope! Only general details on TLA, with no details about Sasaki specifically.

Total Laboratory Automation and Diagnostic Immunology
- was the "first and most dramatic example" of a totally automated laboratory

- used existing equipment, but placed them with conveyor belts and overhead tracks to allow orchestration and automation

- impetus was lack of funding for staff

A fully automated clinical laboratory: The history of the systemic and robotic automated clinical laboratory at the Kochi Medical School

Nonanalytic Laboratory Automation: A Quarter Century of Progress.