Protecting the health of the nation

At the Princess Elizabeth Hospital on Guernsey, two cobas 6000 analysers, linked to Modular Pre-Analytics, from Roche are helping the hospital’s laboratory increase efficiency and become more self-sufficient. “Although we are a small, isolated laboratory, we try to do as much as possible ourselves. We were dealing with an escalating number of tests and when the time came to upgrade four ageing analysers in our clinical chemistry department, consolidation seemed an obvious solution,” explained Nigel Turner, clinical chemistry section head at the hospital. 

With 183 different assays, Roche offers the largest menu of tests available on an automated serum work area (SWA) platform, thus providing an ideal solution for the Guernsey laboratory. The new system has brought benefits for staff and patients alike. Previously, different platforms meant multiple blood draws – one serum tube for each of the analysers, typically three to four per patient – in order to get the work done as quickly as possible. The new streamlined workflow makes the phlebotomist’s job easier and means less discomfort for the patient.

Consolidated workload
The cobas 6000 analysers have also provided greater staff flexibility on Guernsey. “It is difficult to recruit qualified biomedical scientists on the island,” said Nigel. “When a biomedical scientist left recently, the reduced complexity of the system meant that a medical laboratory assistant could be appointed as a replacement. And, as the laboratory runs a multidisciplinary on-call system, people from other disciplines (eg haematology or histopathology) are also required to run the analysers outside normal core hours. Now, it’s just one blood tube, one analyser. Staff just put the tube on and press ‘start’, so it has made a big difference. We’re also saving a significant sum of money, too, as the consolidation of clinical chemistry and immunoassay on one system means that we are doing more work in-house,” Nigel continued.