This was also a public health system (Spain), but I guess it might depend on the country.
Now that you mentions labs, he spent the last 10 years of his career (maybe more, I don't remember clearly) working at a food analysis lab and there was a lot of waiting for results there, but it is what it is, microorganisms take their time to grow and no LLM in the world can make them go faster.
If I remember correctly, the procedure was to prepare a food sample, put it in a temperature-controlled environment for 24 hours, and next day see if something grew there or not. If it did, the food was contaminated.
You could try shortening the time to 6 or 12 hours, but then
1) if something grew then the food was contaminated, but if it didn't, how can you be sure it is good or you just didn't wait enough? You would get a lot of false negatives.
2) the lab followed a normal 8 hours a day schedule, so nobody would be there to analize the results. You would not gain anything.
Now that you mentions labs, he spent the last 10 years of his career (maybe more, I don't remember clearly) working at a food analysis lab and there was a lot of waiting for results there, but it is what it is, microorganisms take their time to grow and no LLM in the world can make them go faster.