Immunotyping: embracing change in Hull and East Yorkshire

Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the larger acute trusts in the UK, providing a full range of services to over 500,000 people in the Hull and East Yorkshire region. As well as providing a large general district hospital, the trust also offers trauma, cancer and specialised consultative care to a wider population of up to 1.2 million people.

From gel to capillary electrophoresis

The immunology department in Hull currently tests 200 serum protein samples and 20–24 urine samples per week using gel and capillary electrophoresis methods. Sharing equipment with biochemistry and haematology, the immunology department uses both gel Hydrasys and capillary Capillarys systems from Sebia. Hydrasys has been in place for six years and was originally brought in to replace the existing manual gel kits due to a rise in sample numbers. Installation of an automated gel electrophoresis system removed the labour-intensive washing and drying steps previously performed manually, freeing laboratory scientists to complete other tasks. With sample numbers continuing to increase, the immunology department looked to capillary electrophoresis as a way of improving laboratory workflow. Chief biomedical scientist Dorothy Spradbery explained: “Our main reason for moving from gel to capillary electrophoresis was due to increased throughput demands. We had experienced the advantages of automation with Sebia’s Hydrasys system and were keen to benefit from the additional level of automation offered by Capillarys.”