The West of Scotland Regional Cytogenetics Service has chosen Thermo Scientific equipment for improved automation in the postnatal laboratory at its Department of Cytogenetics.
The Varistain Gemini ES banding machine from Thermo Fisher Scientific is reducing the slide-making and banding workload of the technical staff at the facility by nearly 50 per cent.
The Clearvue automated cover-slipping machine, meanwhile, solves workflow hassles in the laboratory.
The cover-slipping machine ensures that each slide is uniform in both the placement of the cover slip and the depth of the mountant, significantly improving the procedure.
The postnatal laboratory is using a full range of standard cytogenetic techniques and molecular cytogenetic technology to provide chromosome analysis for both constitutional and acquired abnormalities.
The laboratory processes approximately 6,500 analyses per year - nearly 2,800 of these are postnatal referrals.
With such a high turnaround, the laboratory needed to implement automated procedures to improve reporting times, quality and success rates.
Prior to installing the Thermo Scientific instrumentation, the postnatal laboratory experienced challenges with manual cover slipping and inconsistent speeds in its manual banding process.
The division needed an automated solution to increase the throughput of blood samples, ensuring more efficient sample turnaround, slide preparation and results reporting.
For the West of Scotland Regional Cytogenetics Service, automating its procedures within the postnatal laboratory has led to improved reporting times, quality and success rates.
It has also decreased the poor quality rate for both routine and urgent blood samples.
