Memorandum · Molecular diagnostics · 2026

The unbroken chain

Open for signature

From order to report, without a single manual handover.

The undertaking

A vendor-neutral connecting layer between portal, instrument, pipeline and customer. Across laboratory boundaries.

Where we stand

The individual parts exist in every laboratory and are proven. What is missing is the connection between them.

Signing

Your name under the undertaking, and where you would draw the scope differently.

SignTwo minutes

Starting point

Technically advanced, organisationally hand-carried

Laboratories own software. What they lack is the connection between it. Data travels on sticks, in spreadsheets alongside the LIMS, and by word of mouth. At the same time, the staffing gap can no longer be closed by hiring.

1 in 10

laboratories whose instruments and software are fully connected to one another.

State of Lab Digitalization 2026

6.38 %

of medical technologist positions in German laboratories are unfilled.

AG MTL in ALM e.V.

6,100

additional medical technologists needed in Germany by 2030.

Deutsches Krankenhausinstitut

Target picture

The path of an order

These stations cannot be designed away. They describe every order in every laboratory. The only question is who performs them.

Order → report7 stations

Order

Received through the portal. Captured once instead of three times.

Routing

Laboratory and instrument are assigned by rule.

Preparation

Mixing reagents, loading plates, setting up the instrument.

Measurement

Instrument run from the worklist.

Data

The file leaves the instrument by itself. No stick, no drive letter.

Analysis

The pipeline starts when the file arrives.

Release

Expert review, then delivery to the customer.

runs without interventionstays with a person

A substantial share of orders goes straight from station 05 to release and to the customer. What stays with a person is what only a hand can physically do, and the expert release. Everything in between is carried by a person today, without needing to be.

The measure of this undertaking is neither throughput nor revenue, but the number of human interventions per order. Today that number is in the mid double digits.

Scope

What it explicitly is not

no new LIMS

Yours stays where it is

The layer connects existing systems. It replaces none of them and requires no migration.

no AI diagnosis

The release stays with you

The layer transports and triggers. Your institution still decides on the result.

no data lock-in

Your data stays yours

Open interfaces, documented formats, exit at any time without data loss.

Signature

Will you support this?

We are building this chain. The question is who supports it, and where the scope belongs differently so that it works in your institution too.

Your name under the undertaking. Nothing more is needed at this point.

Background

Why we ask before we build

Atlas operates a multi-tenant platform for order management, a customer portal and routing between laboratories, plus its own wet lab as a test bed. The building blocks for this chain are therefore in place. How it is scoped beyond Atlas will be decided by who helps shape it.

Figures from State of Lab Digitalization 2026 (1LIMS, survey of 110 analytical laboratories), AG MTL in ALM e.V., Deutsches Krankenhausinstitut. As of August 2026.