LBM Bioesterel in France, Arcispedale S. Maria Nuova in Italy and Friarage Hospital in the United Kingdom are among the first laboratories to install the Atellica^® Solution immunoassay and clinical chemistry analysers. The trending motivators for installing the latest innovation from Siemens Healthineers include the unprecedented flexibility to automate redundant and complex procedures to simplify testing workflows and to grow patient testing capacity. This is expected to enable the laboratories to keep up with rising demands and decreasing reimbursement rates—all in an effort to achieve long-term sustainability in a value-based healthcare delivery model.
“Our company is facing a significant reduction in margins due to lower social security payments,” explained Dr. Pierre-Antoine Flé, Associate Director at LBM Bioesterel in France. “In order to limit this impact while increasing our production capacity, our company has chosen the Atellica Solution, which responds particularly to our future needs.”
With the flexibility to combine up to 10 components into more than 300 customizable configurations, to operate either as a standalone system or connected to Aptio^® Automation and to integrate seamlessly with other disciplines in a total laboratory system, the Atellica Solution offers scalability for long-term growth.
LBM Bioesterel anticipates it will be able to redeploy up to 30 percent of its staff.  This is because of the ability to manage the configuration with a single operator and because of features such as automatic quality control (QC) and calibration with on-board refrigeration in the Atellica^® Sample Handler—an integrated component of the Atellica Solution. Laboratories can program the Atellica Solution to automatically deploy the right materials at the right time to specific analysers to perform QC and calibration without operator intervention. This function significantly streamlines otherwise complex procedural workflows and lessens hands-on time for the operator, while eliminating unnecessary waste and decreasing the potential for human error.
Friarage Hospital in the United Kingdom, a member of the South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, was drawn to automatic QC and calibration and to other proactive features designed to increase efficiency in the lab.
“We are very pleased with the support from the Siemens Healthineers teams both in setting up the new instrumentation and in the handling of verification, validation and global study protocols,” said Karl Hubbert, Services Manager Pathology, at Friarage Hospital. “We are looking forward to reduced maintenance and intervention elements, on-board QC stability and programming of QC intervals, as well as sorting of samples post analytics.”
Designed with algorithms to monitor system operations, the Atellica Solution can automatically initiate alerts and recommendations for corrective actions to maximize workflow. A system check and recovery procedure is included in the daily maintenance and also available on demand. This feature increases productivity, minimizes downtime, reduces the need for sample reruns and optimizes consumables and reagent usage.
For Dr. Luigi Vecchia, Director of Clinical Chemistry and Endocrinology Laboratory at Arcispedale S. Maria Nuova in Italy, independent sample management and quality control are priorities.
“The Atellica Solution—with its advanced technical features from sample transportation to real prioritization of urgent samples, and from reagent management to calibration and quality control management—takes us to the future of the laboratory. We are proud to be among the first to test it,” said Dr. Vecchia.
The patented, bi-directional, magnetic sample-transport technology and multi-camera vision system for intelligent sample routing provide independent control over every sample, whether routine or STAT (emergency). The immunoassay analyser uses a dual incubation ring design, rigorous temperature and humidity controls of the reaction environment, powerful magnets for relevant particle separation and robust washing protocols to deliver high throughput, while contributing to rapid and high-precision results.  

www.healthcare.siemens.com/integrated-chemistry/systems/atellica-solution-analyzers
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Flow cytometric immunophenotyping is a rapidly evolving IVD technology which is establishing a place in the routine lab for the assessment of leukemia and certain lymphomas.  At the heart of the test is a panel of antibodies that can detect markers or antigens on the cells.  However, this depends on the accurate interpretation of complex patterns, determining whether a pattern is consistent (normal) or inconsistent with an expected population. To aid in this complex pattern recognition,  Beckman Coulter has developed a unique educational resource, the ClearLLab CaseBook. Users can also download the data to continue their diagnostic practice.
The casebook is based on the ClearLLab 5C reagents which were the first preformulated, IVD antibody cocktails for leukemia and lymphoma immunophenotyping to be granted de novo authorization by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for in vitro diagnostic use.  ClearLLab reagents simplify and standardize the process removing one of the limitations to flow cytometry gaining its place in the routine lab, and eliminating the need for a lab to manually prepare and design panels, a time- consuming process.
The ClearLLab 5C Casebook provides the clinical history of 16 patients, illustrating the progressive analysis of flow cytometric immunophenotyping data by means of numerous colour-coded illustrated scatter plots.  These first assess and then assign the cells before giving a detailed characterization of the aberrant population according to the presence or absence of antigens.  It includes patients with characteristic findings typical of various lymphoid and myeloid neoplasms as well as those with clinical and/or laboratory findings suggesting an underlying neoplastic process, but in which no immunophenotypic abnormality is identified.  Specimen types include peripheral blood, bone marrow, and lymph nodes. Each case concludes with an assessment of the immunophenotypic findings as well as potential pitfalls.
Flow cytometry has several advantages over immunohistochemistry in cancer detection.  This includes its ability to define distinct cell populations by their size and granularity, exclude weakly expressed surface antigens and measure several antigens at the same time with multi-colour analysis.

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CellaVision DC-1 is the newest addition to the CellaVision family of analysers. It has been custom-designed to meet the specific needs of smaller low-volume hematology labs – enabling them to implement the best-practice digital methodology for performing blood cell differentials that many large labs today regard as standard practice.
CellaVision DC-1 is a semi-automated single-slide analyser that, although smaller, works just like the company’s existing analysers. A single slide is loaded onto the CellaVision DC-1 for processing. During processing the slide is automatically positioned under the microscope, the monolayer is identified, cells are located, and high-quality digital images are captured. Innovative image analysis technology delivers a pre-classification of white blood cells and a pre-characterization of red blood cell morphology for review and verification by the medical technologist or pathologist on a computer screen. Structured interfaces, smart functionalities and embedded tools help speed up the review process while promoting accuracy and consistency.

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The new C2MAP-2000 automated pretreatment module for cell culture media analysis is intended for pretreating culture media samples by adding reagents such as a deproteinizing agent or internal standard substance, filtering of precipitated proteins, and diluting of samples. The C2MAP system combines the C2MAP-2000 module with a Shimadzu ultra-fast liquid chromatograph mass spectrometer (LC-MS/MS). By automating all the process steps from pretreatment to measurement, the C2MAP system shortens the culture media analysis time for up to 95 components in culture supernatants to one sixth of the previous level. In addition, this system can be operated by less experienced operators. After simply loading culture supernatant samples, reagents and pairs of filter and recovery vials, the C2MAP-2000 module is able to execute all steps from pretreatment to LC-MS/MS measurement without any human intervention. This seamless execution not only makes it easy to process samples unattended overnight or on non-working days, but also enables samples to be controlled using the same ID for all process steps. This minimizes the risk of selecting the wrong sample while ensuring traceability. C2MAP-TRENDS time-course viewer software loads the measurement data obtained and plots a line graph of temporal changes in each component concentration as trend graphs.

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Beckman Coulter has launched the Kaluza C Flow Cytometry Analysis Software, an advanced data analysis system for the clinical laboratory. The new software streamlines clinical QC reporting and addresses standardization issues in flow cytometry.  Both CE- marked and listed with the FDA, Kaluza C software improves the visualization and analysis of rare events.  It makes it possible to process large, multi-colour, files with up to 20 million events and set the plot resolution according to the gate level.  Further, it enables the operator to focus on a limited number of events to preserve the integrity of the scatter plot.   Tools such as easy Boolean gate formation and autogating are also incorporated to improve the analysis of complex data sets.  It takes less than a second to adjust the compensation and calculate compensation values. Kaluza C offers laboratories the opportunity to improve their clinical reporting.  It provides support at several levels, from quality control and regulatory compliance to ease of use and advanced user management tools. Complex, clinical reporting can now be done in minutes, helping to improve workflow and reduce turnaround time (TAT).
Kaluza C incorporates quality control visualization tools for regulatory and quality control compliance.  The software also offers a range of user management tools, from report page generation to auditing work levels and traceability, and enables easy exporting of data into the main laboratory information system. It can analyse clinical data from any cytometer that complies with the official Flow Cytometry Standard (FCS).  

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