SRL Ranbaxy Ltd has tied up with some of the top hospitals in UK and the Middle East for testing clinical laboratory samples at its labs in India. So far these hospitals used to send their samples for tests mainly to the US.

Right from simple blood tests to advanced tests in the areas of oncology and hematology could be done at the SRL Ranbaxy's labs in India. SRL Ranbaxy has about 10 labs in India with more than 500 sample collection centres.

"We are the first clinical laboratory in India to be accredited with National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratory (NABL), College of American Pathologists (CAP) and ISO IEC 17025 protocols. SRL Ranbaxy, right from its inception has conducted more than 25 million tests. We conduct 3-4 million tests every year. In India about 25,000 doctors in 650 hospitals take our services," said Vidur Kaushik, CEO, SRL Ranbaxy Ltd.

SRL has 95 different technology support infrastructure in its labs. Some of the advanced technology it possess include molecular oncology, cytogenetics, fluorescence in situ hybridization or FISH technology - to probe for genetic mistakes that can be linked to childhood leukaemia, flow cytometry, and immuno histochemistry technology.

"With our growing network around the world, SRL Ranbaxy has become the single largest source of clinical laboratory testing in South East Asia," said Kaushik.

SRL Ranbaxy has also initiated the concept of community labs, with an objective to provide access to the masses to quality middle and lower end tests, which are of tremendous significance.

"The concept has been put together is very significant as most of the local neighborhood labs today do not have quality protocols in place ensuring accuracy of test results. We have integrated our community labs with main labs and patients visiting community labs could avail of the facilities offered by our major labs," said Kaushik.

To begin with SRL will be setting up 40 to 50 community labs across the country. The first two labs in Chandigarh and Gurgaon are functional. These labs are set up with investments as low as Rs.10 to 15 lakhs per lab.