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As the demand for efficiency and quality in the health-care industry has increased over the past few years, adoption of Lean principles and tools in the medical laboratory industry has become increasingly crucial. The purpose of this study is to explore the level of adoption, barriers and enablers of Lean principles and tools in the Namibian medical laboratory industry.

A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out to examine the level of usage, barriers and enablers, impact of Lean tools and to suggest appropriate strategies for adopting Lean in the Namibian medical laboratory services.

Research findings reveal that Lean tools are moderately implemented in most laboratories. Standard operating procedures, root cause analysis, overall equipment effectiveness and visual management are the important Lean tools used in the industry. Results of the survey also show that Lean tools had a positive impact on operational performance, employee motivation, turnaround time and cost reduction. Furthermore, top management involvement, adequate training and proper planning emerged as important enablers, while lack of support from the management, financial constraint and staff resistant to change are major barriers to the adoption of Lean principles in the Namibian medical laboratory industry.

The paper has inherent limitations of survey research, which the authors will overcome by using case studies with medical laboratories.

The findings of the authors’ work will help in widening the application of Lean principles in more medical laboratories in Namibia and in other parts of the world.

The paper is based on numerous health-care studies on Lean. This is one of the few papers investigating the adoption of Lean principles, specifically in medical laboratories, from an emerging economy such as Namibia.

University research and academic laboratory facilities are key elements in the support of a successful education and research experience. World-class universities consider the functionality of these facilities as a matter of high priority. The functionality of research and academic laboratory facilities is strongly linked to the productivity of students, teachers and researchers who use these facilities. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the functional performance of eight university laboratories using the space syntax approach.

The methodology involved the measurements and drawing of as-built floor plans of selected academic and research laboratories. The main benchmarks involved in measuring the functional efficiency, such as mean depth (MD) of space and real relative asymmetry (RRA), were analyzed using the A-graph software and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

The results show that “Type D” (chemistry teaching laboratory) and “Type C” (concrete teaching/research laboratory) laboratories have the tendency to be more accessible, efficient and flexible compared to the other laboratory layouts with MD and RRA values of 5.947 and 3.472, and 4.287 and 1.674, respectively.

This study shows that the functional efficiency of academic and research laboratories can be influenced by the spatial configuration of the space, as presented by the space syntax theory. Space syntax benchmark elements, such as MD, RRA, R and H*, can be used to compare various spatial arrangements, and the results can inform decisions on ways to re-arrange the space for optimum efficiency.

It is hoped that the idea of space syntax theory in the evaluation of the functional efficiency of laboratory facilities, illustrated in this research, is of significant contribution to the enhancement of the research and educational experience of concerned stakeholders in teaching and research environments.

The purpose of this paper is to test the applicability and benefits of benchmarking as a tool for quality analysis in Brazilian laboratory medical services.

A primary observational study is performed in eight hospital laboratories by tracking the receipt, analysis and return to participants of monitoring reports relating to several quality indicators for the years 2005 and 2006. Whenever possible, the paper applies 6σ criteria as an independent assessment of process quality.

Data obtained for the eight laboratories showed a monthly average (±SD) of 178,579 (±153,670) tests performed per laboratory, with 40,256 (±44,858) requisitions and 4.77 (±1.33) tests per requisition. Overall, productivity was 7.35 (±2.46) tests per man‐hour of work (MHW), increasing to 15.36 (±6.00) when considering only the analytical sector staff. An average of 1.63 (±1.14) lost hours per hundred MHW were reported (level 3.6σ), with 3.86 (±5.10) accidents at work reported (AWR) per hundred thousand MHW (level 5.5σ) and 4.22 (±2.61) redraws per thousand requisitions attended (level 4.1σ). The turn‐around‐times were 2.25 (±0.98), 3.29 (±2.12) and 8.54 (±3.25) hours for glucose level, haemogram and human immunodeficiency virus serology, respectively.

Benchmarking proved to be a useful and feasible tool for quality management in Brazilian clinical laboratories, particularly when associated with independent tools for evaluating the quality of laboratorial processes.

This is the first Brazilian study reporting that benchmarking provides useful information on the performance of different clinical laboratory processes and, therefore, could become an important tool for laboratory management.

Healthcare environments are highly complex and full of variation and inefficiency. However, variation and inefficiency can be measured and improved, providing better quality care at a lower cost. This study aims to report the application of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) in a haematology laboratory in a university hospital in Egypt.

The authors used case study research. Applying the define, measure, analyse, improve and control phases of the DMAIC methodology together with lean tools, the problem was identified, the process mapped, the causes analysed and improvements implemented.

Results show that LSS can be successfully implemented in challenging public sector healthcare settings. Management commitment, generating and implementing ideas from frontline staff, using a variety of quality tools and previous LSS training were all key to success. This is evidence that the LSS methodology is adaptable to any process, people or place.

There are no publications on LSS implementation in health care in Egypt. This study demonstrates the successful use of LSS in a university hospital (public sector) in a developing country, sharing insight into the facilitators and barriers in a real context with others in the healthcare field.

The purpose of this study was to explore students’ perceptions to changes to the learning environment of their undergraduate physics laboratories, in which their scientific inquiry processes were stimulated.

The activities students engaged in were redesigned to reflect a guided inquiry approach and to acknowledge modern-day advances in science and technology. Further, enhanced guidance was provided for laboratory instructors regarding the nature of scientific inquiry and how to structure students’ inquiry experiences during laboratory sessions. Students’ views were sought regarding their perceptions of the impact of the reforms on the laboratory learning environments, their thinking processes in those environments and their views regarding the reform’s value and appropriateness.

Analyses of quantitative and qualitative data suggested that students responded positively to the reforms implemented. Large effect sizes of between 0.70 and 1.20 suggested significant positive shifts in students’ perceptions of dimensions of their laboratory learning environments. In interviews, students expressed that they had engaged in the cognitive processes of scientific inquiry and suggested that the reforms had stimulated such “inquiry” thinking. However, their perceptions of the value and appropriateness of such inquiry-oriented laboratory learning environments were mixed.

Concerns persist in higher education in relation to the extent of students’ inquiry processes in undergraduate physics laboratories. Reforms to both the activities that students engage in and to instructional strategies are necessary. Raising awareness of the views expressed by students might help inform future reforms that accommodate those views to further enhance similar reforms.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the efficiency levels of the decision‐making units within the public hospital laboratories in using their supply chain towards meeting the satisfaction of doctors.

Data were collected from two senior laboratory administrators and 30 doctors of two hospital laboratories in Malaysia using two sets of structured questionnaires, which comprised of two dimensions, i.e. doctor satisfaction dimension (DSD) and supply chain inputs (SCI). The dimensions of DSD and SCI were developed and that SCI has been relabeled as hospital laboratory inputs (HLI) to suit the nature of current study. The resulting data were positioned on an importance‐performance matrix. By using the data envelopment analysis software, the efficient frontier for both hospital laboratories was calculated under different scenarios.

Results reveal that one of the laboratories satisfies doctors efficiently using the present levels of HLI for each scenario while the other failed.

The paper focuses only on two hospital laboratories.

The findings offer insights on the important dimensions of DSD and HLI that the hospital laboratories should concentrate on when measuring doctor satisfaction through the utilization of resources they possess. This will undoubtedly lead to better hospital‐doctor‐patient relationships.

Many prior supply chain studies have focused on patient satisfaction. This paper is probably one of the first attempts that comprehensively examines satisfaction from the perspective of doctors.

The purpose of this paper is to model the relationship between student performance, student attitudes, and computer laboratory environments.

Data were collected from 234 college students enrolled in courses that involved the use of a computer to solve problems and provided the laboratory experience by means of formal closed laboratory classes. The a priori proposed model that student performance can be explained by perceptions of the computer laboratory environment and attitudes towards computer was tested using structural equation modeling.

The proposed model was determined to fit the data reasonably well. These results indicate that student performance scores can be explained by perceptions of the computer laboratory environment and attitudes toward computers.

The theoretical and practical implications of the model concerning student performance within the framework of educational management are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the status of US hospital Laboratory Information Systems. Laboratory Information Systems are critical to high quality healthcare service provision. Data show that the need for these systems is growing to meet accompanying technological and workload demands. Additionally, laboratory tests provide the majority of information for clinical decision‐making. Laboratory processes automation, including patient result verification, has greatly improved laboratory test throughput while decreasing turn‐around‐times, enabling critical results to reach physicians rapidly for improved clinical outcomes.

Data were drawn from the 2007 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Analytics Database, which includes over 5,000 US healthcare organizations and provides extensive data on the hardware, software, and information technology infrastructure within healthcare organizations.

US hospitals are actively involved in laboratory systems planning to improve health service quality. Specifically, data show 76 new laboratory information systems are currently being installed in 2007 with another 399 under contract for future installation. As a result, increasing investment in laboratory information systems is providing state‐of‐the‐art clinical laboratory support, which enhances clinical care processes and improves quality. These state‐of‐the‐art Laboratory Information Systems, when linked with other clinical information systems such as Computerized Physician Order Entry and Electronic Medical Record, will support further healthcare quality improvement.

This article includes the most current information available on the US hospital laboratory information system applications.

This work aims to propose an alternative method of human capital calculation for research laboratories of public university, taking into account some drawbacks of the methods currently applied in this field.

This method is implemented via a linear program extracted from Data Envelopment Analysis based on slack movement. This is the formulation of Copper et al. (2000), which is used as the starting point for developing the proposed method through important transformations.

The proposed method is supported by an illustration related to a Moroccan public university. This illustration showed that 57 per cent of the laboratories and all the research activities that they perform are in deficit with respect to target scores.

The proposed method has technical limitations related to scores equal to 1 and to variables when those are numerous. To solve them, it is possible to use peer benchmarking system for the first limitation, and methods of regrouping the variables when those are numerous for the second limitation. Equally, the proposed method does not associate slack with important factors like governance and the impact analysis of research on innovation, competitiveness, and societal aspects. Likewise, it does not use the slack to measure individual efficiency at the same laboratory. Future research can fill these gaps.

This work allows making appropriate budgetary and research policy within university, through budgeting process and management control by using raw and adjusted target values as well as actual ones. Also, the highlighting of the excessive slacks leads the university to take actions to reduce them, according to the most loss-making research activities.

The proposed method is original, since it fills a deficit in terms of human capital target values calculation and of the slack movement concept in relation to the efficient frontier. Additionally, it transforms the Data Envelopment Analysis program into a program that eliminates the slacks linked to the inputs, the radial movement related to the outputs and treats only the outputs and slacks related to these outputs.

This paper sets out to evaluate the potential of financial performance benchmarking as an expenditure control tool for a national pathology service comprising both public and private service providers.

Primary data were provided by direct consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, whose experience and perspectives were sought primarily through informal face‐to‐face interviews. The authors analyse these informant contributions alongside official reports and the published literature on dual public‐private health service provision.

Informants identified potential advantages and pitfalls in comparative pathology benchmarking for expenditure control. They also identified some significant negative implications for health service quality and suggested related compromises. Often misunderstood cost benchmarking issues are clarified in the paper.

Several areas of importance for further investigation are suggested.

The paper concludes that appropriate performance benchmarking can be applied to New Zealand pathology services as a useful service rationalisation tool and a realistic price‐signalling device, provided that certain safeguards on health service quality are in place.

General issues complicating financial performance benchmarking across sectors in a mixed economy for health service provision are identified for the guidance of researchers, decision‐makers and planners.