New Delhi, Mar 24 (PTI) In a major relief to the patients visiting the AIIMS here, the time duration of sample collection for diagnostic tests at the facility has been further extended by three hours, officials said on Thursday.

Samples will now be collected from 8 am to 6.30 pm, they said.

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"This will particularly provide relief to the patients who attend the afternoon clinics, which often continue till 5 or 6 pm. So the samples for the investigations prescribed by the doctors can then be given on the same day, saving an extra visit to the hospital," said Dr Subrata Sinha, the head of the laboratory medicine department at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS).

With the new automated systems, including the robotic "smart lab" now being fully operational, over 50,000 individual tests are being conducted at the premier hospital in a day, which in turn eliminates backlog in testing.

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In September last year, the AIIMS had extended the timings for collecting the blood samples till 3.30 pm.

"The Department of Laboratory Medicine has increased the timing of blood collection and body fluids at New RAK OPD (Basement) and old RAK OPD (Lab No. 27 and 28) up to 6.30 pm.

"The reports of routine investigations will be released within three hours of receiving the samples except some special tests, depending on the procedure of processing samples," a communication sent to medical superintendent Dr D K Sharma by Dr Sinha on March 23 said.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)