In a regular feature, Pathology in Practice will speak with leading personalities from the diagnostic industry to gain their views and opinions on current topical issues facing the profession. In the spotlight in this issue is Peter Nest, who is no stranger to the diagnostics industry, having been employed within it since 1987 following a 10-year career as a biomedical scientist at the Royal East Sussex Hospital in Hastings. Peter eventually left the NHS to commence work as a sales engineer for Clandon Scientific, following which he enjoyed a spell in sales at Roche, before forming a small company called Apex Diagnostics, selling Biotrol chemistry reagents to the UK market. Later he became a product manager for Alpha Laboratories, and then their UK sales manager (diagnostics), before joining IBG Immucor in 2003 as sales and marketing manager. Peter took up his present post as UK general manager for IBG Immucor in September 2009.
PIP What is IBG Immucor’s position in the UK diagnostic marketplace?
PN IBG was founded in 1988 and was one of the first companies to introduce automation to blood grouping and antibody screening, with the first ‘Inverness Sampler’ being installed in 1989 and, rather amazingly, the last one being taken out of service as late as 2008. In 1999, IBG became the distributor for Immucor Incorporated, the market leader in blood transfusion in the USA, and the company then changed its name to IBG Immucor. As of June 2008, IBG Immucor became part of Immucor Incorporated; so it is now a subsidiary of a global diagnostics company with 760 staff and a $329m turnover. We estimate our share of the hospital testing market to be approximately 20%, and I am pleased to say that this has been growing steadily over the past few years. Our systems run liquid-phase grouping, which remains one of the most cost-effective methods of grouping available, and Immucor’s Capture solid-phase techniques for antibody screening and ID. Our latest analyser, NEO, and the smaller ECHO system mean that we can provide a fully automated solution for most sizes of laboratory, whatever their workload.
PIP When will the new NEO analyser be available to UK blood banks?
PN The NEO is already available in the UK; in fact we have installed seven units since March 2010. The NEO is the largest of our analysers and has a real throughput of at least 60 samples per hour for group and screen. Of course, its main advantage is that it uses Capture technology, but it has many other features, such as trickle feed, short turnaround time (STAT) testing, and dynamic scheduling to name just a few.
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