Sealing cells inside narrow, tapered glass tips allowed the design of a robot that performs fully automated patch clamp experiments with high quality, high throughput and at low cost. Experience with micromanipulators is not required. No biophysics / electronics wizard is needed. This type of machine has recently been dubbed a "biochemists patch clamp".

More and more cell biologists and pharmaceutical researchers will turn their attention to ion channels, since this protein class has been shown to be linked to various diseases and pharmaceutical safety problems. The methods allowing automated patch clamp measurements will revolutionize the drug screening process and profoundly accelerate scientific and commercial advances in the field of membrane transport.