Utah’s new lab to use robotics to speed up rape kit testing – KUTV 2News

Utah's new lab to use robotics to speed up rape kit testing (File photo: KUTV)

TAYLORSVILLE, Utah (AP) Officials are hopeful Utah's major rape kit backlog will be reduced now that a new state crime laboratory has opened where robotic machines can extract DNA samples and deliver them to forensic technicians much faster than humans.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports (http://bit.ly/2s1wiRt ) a new Unified State Laboratory was opened Thursday in Taylorsville, where Lab Director Jay Henry says the robotics station does the repetitive work of extracting DNA, then delivers the data to forensic scientists. In addition to freeing up a technician to do more analytical work, the station is capable of extracting DNA faster.

The station is capable of processing 96 samples in less than eight hours, a task that took Henry three or four days when he worked as a lab technician.

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Utah's new lab to use robotics to speed up rape kit testing - KUTV 2News