Analytical Instrument Utilization Report

Download a sample of the report here.

We interviewed 40 directors of core facilities, clinical diagnostics labs, and reference labs to understand the instrument purchasing practices over the past 5 years, and their planned purchases over the next 3 years (through 2027). Participants discuss their annual CapEx spending and annual reagent pull-through (i.e., annual spending on reagents for a given instrument) for different categories of instrumentation. 

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Instrument Categories:

• General Lab Equipment
• Lab Automation
• Short-Read Sequencing
• Long-Read Sequencing
• NGS Multiomics
• Single Cell
• Spatial
• QC

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Regions: 

• U.S.: N=16
• UK: N=3
• Northern Europe: N=8 
  
• Southern Europe: N=3
  
• APAC: N=10 
  

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Funding archetypes: Labs are segmented into the following archetypes based on cost and funding behaviors:

• Revenue-Diverse: General academic core labs (i.e., not specialized to a particular omics) across regions that are not negatively impacted by funding uncertainty
• Regional Providers: In APAC (notably China), many large reference labs are funded to provide testing services for both research and clinical facilities
• Clinical Hubs: Labs processing clinical samples for patient diagnosis, largely located at large university or regional hospitals
• Specialists: Cores offering specialty instruments / services in a specialized workflow or -omics (e.g., single cell, proteomics)
• Grant-Limited: Facilities significantly impacted by reduced NIH funding at the institutional level, limiting planned instrument purchases
• Lean Operators: Labs outside the U.S., budget-conscious due to generally limited institutional funds rather than uncertain federal policies / grant awards