The Automation Quality Control Special Interest Group provides a forum for discussion of topics relating to optimizing performances of laboratory instrumentation. The objective is to encourage development of procedures that should be of interest to instrument vendors and practitioners alike. Specific topics include:

• Development of best practices for assessing performance of liquid handlers, microplate readers and integrated systems with a view toward making it easier to compare instruments between vendors and to correlate results across platforms.
• Promoting the sharing of experiences and ideas on data formatting during acquisition and export. Techniques and strategies which ease the task of integrating new instrumentation into automated environments is of special interest.
• Establishing vehicles for the dissemination of these best practices into user laboratories and vendors development teams.