INTEGRA has reported how a leading US clinical diagnostic laboratory has, using a VIAFLO 96 handheld electronic pipette, significantly improved the reproducibility and productivity with which it carries out Real-time PCR assays. An important source of income for the clinical diagnostic lab is the screening of patient samples for the presence of disease markers by gene expression analysis. This analysis involved transferring pre-treated patient samples from a 96-well plate source to a target PCR plate, adding the PCR master mix and then subsequently analysing the plate by real-time PCR. The lab traditionally processed around 100 plates per day and the work was all done using 12-channel pipettes. Manually filling a 96-well plate, including changing of pipette tips after every sample transfer, was acknowledged to be a time consuming task and transferring the samples often proved to be prone to error.