Patent ID: 11908087
Assignee: ROCHE DIAGNOSTICS OPERATIONS, INC.
Field: Audio-visual technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G  H | IPC G  H

Claim 0:
1. A productivity tool for an analytical laboratory having a plurality of laboratory instrument(s), the productivity tool comprising:
a control unit communicatively connectable to one or more laboratory instrument(s) of a first group;
one or more surveillance device(s) external to the laboratory instrument(s) arranged to capture one or more external surveillance stream(s) of one or more of a second group of laboratory instrument(s), the external surveillance data stream(s) independent of the one or more laboratory instruments of the second group; and
a lab monitoring interface, wherein the control unit is configured to:
receive one or more internal data stream(s) from the laboratory instrument(s) of the first group and one or more external surveillance stream(s) of the laboratory instrument(s) of the second group, the internal data stream(s) comprising data indicative of an operational status of one or more laboratory instrument(s) of the first group,
process the internal data stream(s) from the laboratory instrument(s) of the first group to extract the operational status of one or more laboratory instrument(s) of the first group,
process the external surveillance stream(s) of the laboratory instrument(s) of the second group to detect an operational status of one or more laboratory instrument(s) of the second group,
output the operational status of any one of the laboratory instrument(s) of the first group via the lab monitoring interface,
output the operational status of any one of the laboratory instrument(s) of the second group via the lab monitoring interface;
wherein the one or more surveillance device(s) comprises a video camera and the external surveillance stream(s) comprise a video signal from the video camera capturing video of one or more of the second group of laboratory instrument(s); and
wherein the control unit is configured to detect an operational status by analyzing the video signal of the one or more of a second group of laboratory instrument(s), wherein the detecting of an operational status comprises detecting changes of a user interface of the one or more of the second group of laboratory instrument(s), wherein the detecting changes of the user interface of the laboratory instrument(s) comprises detecting changes of colors and/or the appearance of one or more icons.