Survey Finds Expected Growth in Analytical Instrumentation Purchases

By Lori Solomon, Editor, Diagnostic Testing & Emerging Technologies

A new survey reveals that laboratories are planning to increase equipment purchases this year, with analytical instrumentation reported as the top expected purchase.

Each year at Pittcon (Atlanta; March 6-10), an annual conference for analytical chemistry and applied spectroscopy, Laboratory Equipment surveys its readers about their purchasing plans. Those surveyed represented a broad spectrum of laboratory disciplines including life science, food science, drug discovery, environmental, forensics, nanotechnology, water and wastewater, energy and fuel, agriculture, and bioterrorism.

Analytical instrumentation again remained the most frequent planned equipment purchase reported in the survey, with 56 percent of respondents expecting to make a purchase within the next 12 months. This is actually an increase of seven percent, compared to 2015 survey results. The other top planned laboratory equipment purchases for 2016 include: software (23 percent), meters and monitors (22 percent), spectrometers (22 percent), and sample prep instrumentation (18 percent).

Respondents report that the main reason for making purchases of this new equipment is to replace existing systems (49 percent of survey respondents) or add on to existing systems for enhanced capabilities (31 percent). Overall, laboratories report being satisfied with the performance of their instrumentation—65 percent are somewhat satisfied and 26 percent are very satisfied. However, respondents report an increase in dissatisfaction related to costs of maintenance and repair. This year, 39 percent report maintenance costs as the biggest fault with their current instrumentation, compared to 24 percent last year. Other reported faults with their current equipment include that it is outdated (28 percent) and have high operating costs (7 percent).

Looking ahead, respondents expect changes in laboratory equipment over the next five years to be driven by advancing medical device technology (22 percent of respondents) and automation of systems (19 percent). When asked what changes they would most like manufacturers to address, respondents unsurprisingly said cost of ownership (55 percent), ease-of-use (49 percent), maintenance (45 percent) and performance (43 percent).