RECENT NEWS

The cobas Inventory Management System (cIMS) from Roche was installed at the Royal Preston Hospital in October 2007. It has resulted in significant time savings and increased efficiency in the management of analyser reagents at the Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

A new software application has been created by Quality Systems International (QSI) that enables laboratories to easily and efficiently manage their consumables stock control. The new WinLims stock control module allows a stock record to be created for each consumable item used during analysis. The stock record includes the supplier’s details, a description of the consumable item, opening stock figures, re-order levels, re-order amounts, shelf life and cost per item or amount. With each receipt of stock, the supplier’s batch details are recorded including the cost per item, date it was receipted, and the quantity for each specific shipment.

Randox Laboratories is a primary manufacturer of true third-party quality control sera. The company produces quality controls that guarantee a truly independent performance assessment for diagnostic devices, methods and reagents. They are not biased or optimised to work with a specific instrument or reagent.

InGen BioSciences' primary focus is on infectious diseases and immunology, including human leucocyte antigen (HLA) testing. The group's distribution arm, InGen, supplies a large selection of high-performance reagents combined with platform analysis. Its research and development (R&D) activities are designed to bring innovative tests to market that are minimally invasive, fast, cost-effective and clinically relevant.

Dickson has announced the web publication of online support guides, in downloadable pdf format and as videos on YouTube, to help its worldwide customers to monitor temperature, humidity, pressure and other electronic signal ‘events’ important to critical storage.

Microvisk Technologies, the developer of the patented technology for point-of-care monitoring of blood coagulation for patients taking the drug warfarin, has raised £2 million by attracting three new investors and retaining support from its current private and institutional investors.

Oxoid has announced that its range of products for antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) includes all products recommended by EUCAST (European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing) for use in the new, harmonised European disc-diffusion method.

The Parenteral Drug Association (PDA) recently held a discussion forum on 'Implementing Rapid Microbiology Methods' with representatives from European health authorities including the European Medicines Agency (EMEA). During the debate, health authority representatives revealed ongoing discussions within EMEA working groups on procedures to better enable continuous improvements.

Founded in 2009 to fill a niche in the UK healthcare market – providing quality products at sensible prices combined with a truly personal customer service – Invitech has announced that it has achieved ISO 9001:2008 accreditation.

The new Label Attachment System from Brady has enabled a Cardiff histopathology unit to put an end to hand-writing sample identification on tissue cassettes. The department previously used pencil to identify samples in tissue cassettes, resulting in a number of potential problems. Brady Tissue Cassette labels, printed with the BBP11 printer and specially developed thermal transfer ribbon, are resistant to all the chemicals required for histological processing. The BSP31 unit has four tiny heat probes which pierce the label and tissue cassette, melting the plastic sufficiently to form permanent rivets which hold the label in place throughout the paraffin embedding process. The Brady BSP31 Label Attachment System provides a fast, simple and cost-effective way of guaranteeing labelling integrity throughout processing, embedding, sectioning and storage for up to 20 years.

An antibiotic that binds to a well-established target in a novel and unexpected way could be the inspiration for designing new, more potent antibacterial drugs, according to research published recently in the journal Science.

Healthcare Science Week 2010 is scheduled to take place on March 12–21, and was launched officially at the Chief Scientific Officer’s Conference last November. All healthcare scientists are encouraged to get involved through poster presentations and lunchtime talks, or by becoming a healthcare science ambassador.

Delta Consultants, the Cambridgeshire-based scientific and medical recruitment agency, looks to future growth in its UK and European operations by appointing Sue Ward (pictured) to its specialist recruitment team as a senior account manager.

The Department of Cytogenetics at Sheffield Children’s Hospital has taken delivery of an Accord image analysis system, the first of its kind to achieve US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance for HER2 amplification detection in breast cancer. Accord is one of an exciting new range of tools launched by Image Solutions in the fight against aggressive HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer.

The new cobas Inventory Management System (cIMS) from Roche, installed at the Royal Preston Hospital in October 2007, has resulted in significant time savings and increased efficiency in the management of analyser reagents at the Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Thermo Fisher Scientific offers UK scientists a wide range of Macherey Nagel products for nucleic acid purification, including the NucleoSpin Robot-96 Plasmid Kit for the rapid isolation of plasmid DNA in a 96-well plate format. The Molecular Biology Core Facility at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research at the University of Manchester) has used the kit for the last six months to provide purified plasmid DNA for downstream applications such as sequencing, cloning and transfections.

As part of National Pathology Week, Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics joined forces with Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to inspire the young minds of the Frimley area by opening their doors to students from local secondary schools and colleges. A guided tour of the fully automated pathology department showed a department in action and illustrated the role of science in the diagnosis and treatment of disease.

Sebia (UK) recently hosted a visit of its Camberley-based facilities by local MP Gerald Howarth. As part of the second National Pathology Week, Sebia created the opportunity to promote an understanding of the pathology sector by local community and government.

pfm UK Histotechnology, a new company to the UK market, will focus on sales of pfm Histology equipment. The parent company, pfm AG, is acting as the exclusive distributor in Europe for the Feather Safety Razor Company, based in Japan, which manufactures surgical and histopathology cutting products of the highest quality. Feather disposable microtome blades are the global gold standard and have until now been offered in the UK solely through an exclusive distributor. pfm UK Histotechnology is a division of pfm medical UK, which opened its UK company in 2007.

Dr Richard Benton, assistant professor at the Center for Integrative Genomics, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, has won the Eppendorf and Science Prize for Neurobiology 2009 for his research on how insects sense volatile chemical signals.