Horiba Medical has installed 17 ABX Pentra 80 haematology analysers across Spire Healthcare's network of pathology laboratories.
Spire Healthcare is a UK group of private hospitals, operating 17 laboratories across the UK to support its 37 hospitals.
The group provides routine and specialist laboratory services to various external clients, including independent and NHS hospitals, general practitioners, pharmaceutical companies, research centres, universities and the UK's largest health screening organisation.
As a result, it is essential that Spire delivers reliable customer service when testing more than 1.5 million samples per year.
The small footprint of the ABX Pentra 80 is a result of its integrated workstation with LCD-colour touch screen and autoloader, which means that the analyser is suitable for a 'hot lab' situation where space is at a premium.
With its technology used in high-throughput NHS laboratories, as well as smaller centres and specialist clinics, the analyser, with its inbuilt autoloader providing a continuous loading capability, can handle a steadily increasing workload.
It took less than six weeks to build, deliver and run the 17 analysers from the time the contract was signed.
Spire has found its laboratories to be running more efficiently, with far less analyser downtime occurring.
The cost efficiencies of using Horiba Medical haematology analysers in all its laboratories in terms of reagents usage, engineering support and training have also been noted by Spire.
Tim Woolley, pathology services manager at Spire, said: 'The commonality of analysers between laboratories enables our staff to work at different sites as required.
'Furthermore, should our future testing levels require it, we can also readily and cost-effectively move, where necessary, to higher-throughput Horiba Medical ABX Pentra 120 analysers, which use the same technology and reagents etc,' he added.
