If Microcheck laboratory's genetic analyser were to go down due to unconditioned power, the laboratory simply would not be able to keep up with client demand to identify hundreds of samples per week
In a good month, Microcheck, a microbial identification laboratory, suffers only two power outages - and that's a good month.
Frequent outages are caused by severe weather, including snow, ice, and windstorms, in Microcheck's location in the one-stoplight town of Northfield, Vermont.
Since even a power flicker as short as 30 milliseconds may result in equipment damage, sample loss, and lost productive time, Mike Sinclair, CEO/laboratory director of Microcheck, proactively installed a certified Franek Technologies power protection system with battery back-up to protect the laboratory's $150,000 Applied Biosystems (ABI) Prism 3130xl genetic analyser.
Since the overall success of the company is directly linked to its capability to process samples 24/7, Microcheck's investment in the Franek Technologies power protection system was determined to be crucial.
As experts in bacterial, fungal, yeast, and actinomycete identification, environmental monitoring, and microbiology testing, Microcheck, which is FDA-regulated; A2LA certified as a microbial proficiency test provider; and ISO/IEC 17025 compliant; supports quality control programmes for the pharmaceutical, biomedical device, and related industries.
In the pharmaceutical/biomedical device arena, which represents the lion's share of Microcheck's business, one of the many things that Microcheck does is to ensure that critical human medical devices, such as hip and knee replacements, have been adequately sterilised and therefore safe for transplant into patients.
Biological indicators (BIs), such as the spores of certain bacteria, are packaged and inserted with the load of items to be sterilised by steam, ethylene oxide, or ultraviolet light.
The BIs are placed throughout the load but especially in places determined to be the most difficult for sterilant penetration.
Following sterilisation the BIs are transferred from the packaging into media which will support their growth under proper incubation conditions.
If growth of the BIs occurs, this may indicate that the sterilisation process did not kill the BI spores.
Growth may also occur if there was a medium contaminant or post sterilisation contamination.
Microcheck's role upon receipt of these sterility failure samples from its global client base is to determine if the organisms growing in the media are vegetative cells that grew from the spores of the BIs not killed by the sterilisation process or contaminants that may have been introduced.
Microcheck's genetic analyser makes it possible to determine the same day, if the need should arise, whether growth was due to inadequate sterilisation and thus the materials that underwent sterilization should not be transplanted into patients.
Since, according to Sinclair, ABI only recommends Franek Technologies as a power protection provider, he contacted the company for a customised power protection solution with battery back-up.
Without the certified instrumentation-specific power protection, Sinclair estimates that each power outage could result in a loss of $5000 in damage to the lasers in the genetic analyser alone.
Since the Microcheck laboratory experiences an average of two outages per month, the cost of unprotected instrumentation is significant and this doesn't include sample loss or lost productive time as a result of the outages.
When the inevitable power outages do occur, the genetic analyser is able to complete the run in progress and then initiate a managed shutdown of the instrument and the computer system, thereby protecting all instrumentation as well as the integrity of the samples.
"I sleep better at night knowing that our ABI genetic analyser will run 24/7 regardless of what's going on weather-wise outside our laboratory," explains Sinclair.
"It would be irresponsible to our clients not to have a Franek Technologies unit supporting the genetic analyser as the risks are just too great and directly tied to our bottom line.
"Our investment in this level of protection is insurance and an absolute necessity for Microcheck".
"We are very proud of our relationship with Microcheck," states Raymond Hecker, VP/general manager, Franek Technologies.
"We like being associated with leading-edge organisations who have selected our products to help them advance science, public health, and national security".
"We look forward to working with Microcheck for years to come."
