Rod Markin
Rodney Smith Markin (born 1956), is an American pathologist and authority in the field of laboratory automation. In 1993, he designed and created one of the world's first automated clinical laboratory specimen, device and analyzer management systems. In the mid-1990s, he chaired a standards group called the Clinical Testing Automation Standards Steering Committee (CTASSC) of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry, which later evolved into an area committee of the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. Markin serves as the Vice President for Business Development and practices pathology at Nebraska Medicine, is associate vice chancellor for business development for the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and executive director of the UNeTech Institute of the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the University of Nebraska Omaha. He serves as both the David T. Purtilo Professor in the Department of Pathology and Microbiology in UNMC's College of Medicine as well as the Executive Director of the UNeTech Institute. . Prior to his current position, he was the chief operating officier of the University of Nebraska system, the chief technology officer at UNMC, interim dean of the UNMC College of Medicine, board chairman and president and CEO of the Nebraska Medicine clinical practice plan (fka UNMC Physicians), an academic medical practice which includes more than 750 physicians, and has held several other administrative and academic positions at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Early life Markin was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1977 from Nebraska Wesleyan University, where he majored in chemistry with minors in mathematics and physics. He received a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1980; he earned his medical degree from the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) in 1983; he completed his residency in pathology and laboratory medicine at UNMC in 1986. He has been on the UNMC faculty since 1986. His professional and academic research interests have focused on clinical laboratory automation including robotics, information systems, medical utilization management, business efficiency modeling, adult and pediatric pathology, liver/gastrointestinal pathology, telehealth, telemedicine, technology development and mobile health. Career Laboratory automation development Markin's interest in laboratory automation, blending clinical processes with information technology, began during his graduate studies, which focused on graph theory. By 1989, he developed a prototype system that would later allow "plug-and-play" integration of automation systems and clinical analyzers for managing and testing of patient specimens. His approach was to build an automated transport system which would allow various testing processes using commercial, off-the-shelf testing and collection systems. He didn't design the instruments, but sought an automated system to manage the testing processes, leading to increased efficiency, improved reporting and lower laboratory costs. He founded LAB-InterLink in 1993, and commercialized a system to manage clinical specimens using an automated transportation system and specimen processing devices (i.e. decapping devices, recapping devices, instrument or analyzer interfaces, etc.) for laboratory testing and processing. For example, the specimen would be separated using a centrifuge; the specimen container would be uncapped; the