Table 2.

Underlying Cost Components for Each Value-added Laboratory Workflow

Item	Description	Examples
Reagents and Consumables	Items, both chemical and material, which are necessary to perform requested tasks.	Xylene, Ficoll-Paque Plus™ reagent (chemical); Eppendorf tubes and packaging equipment (material).
Infrastructure	Large capital equipment and service contracts needed to do a given procedure in a given laboratory area. Charges for infrastructure vary across different laboratory workflows.	Cryostats and microtomes (histology); centrifuges (processing), freezers (storage).
Labor	Influenced by overall rates of pay (salary and benefits), the skill level and personnel education/training (and thus the pay rate) needed for a given procedure, and the person-hours needed to accomplish a task. Labor costs vary greatly across laboratories and across various tasks within the laboratory.	Ficoll processing and laser capture microscopy (very labor intensive); basic cell processing (less labor intensive).