Horiba Medical has upgraded the haematology analysers at the pathology lab of Synergy Health Laboratory Services (SHLS) in Abergavenny, Wales, to three larger ABX Pentra 120 Retic systems.
As a specialist provider of outsourced healthcare services covering a range of routine haematology, microbiology, virology and toxicology analytical services, SHLS has seen its workload increase significantly over the past four years and identified a need for haematology analysers that could handle peak workloads of up to 1,300 samples a day.
With the ABX Pentra 120 Retics in situ, the laboratory at SHLS is able to process up to 3,000 samples a week with capacity to expand.
The ABX Pentra 120 Retics replace three existing ABX Pentra 80 analysers.
'Our ABX Pentra 80 analysers were ideal when we were managing 500 samples a week,' said Andy Walker, national laboratory services manager, Synergy Health.
'However, they could not cope with our increased workload and we needed to upgrade to gain the speed and throughput necessary,' he added.
The ABX Pentra 120s allow for increased throughput capacity to achieve a quicker turnaround time.
As part of its analytical services, the lab at SHLS provides haematology testing for occupational health and environmental screening, as well as supporting the safety monitoring of patients for pharmaceutical companies.
This requires results to be available the same day they are processed in order to enable dosing decisions to be made by physicians.
Patient samples are received by post and are therefore at least 24 hours old when they are processed.
With a robust differential, the ABX Pentra 120 Retic analysers can perform even with aged samples up to 72 hours old.
The ability to handle sample degradation as a result of delays incurred with postal and courier deliveries and still ensure that the daily workload can be processed with results provided by the end of the day was an essential factor in choosing new analysers.
'On average we receive 700-800 samples a day, but there are peaks where we can have up to 1,300 samples to process,' said Walker.
By connecting directly with the laboratory information management system (Lims), data is readily available following sample analysis.
'With the ABX Pentra 120 Retic haematology analysers in place, we have the throughput capacity to increase our workload but also, with the reticulocyte mode, we can increase our analysis repertoire and broaden our capability,' said Walker.
