Hillerød Hospital
Safe and easy data tracking of blood samples
A smooth workflow for diagnosing lactose intolerance
In a hospital world, one sample switching mistake can have critical consequences and even cause misdiagnosis of one or more patients. Therefore, nothing is as important as ensuring a safe and secure data tracking workflow.
Hillerød Hospital has taken that to the next level with Flow Robotics’ scanID – a high-performance sample tracking solution – and the liquid handler, flowbot® ONE. They are using the flowbot ONE and scanID combination for testing whole blood for lactose intolerance with qPCR.
The SNP test has a demanding pipetting and sample tracking workload and great traceability is of utmost importance for providing the right treatment. That’s why they decided to automate the process and became among the first users of the scanning device, scanID.
“The ScanID gives us a lot of safety. Using a superior instrument like that is a convenient way of ensuring that our samples are always tracked correctly. In addition, it makes it much easier for us to keep a register of the samples and their results,” says Claus Juel Jensen, Chief Physician at Hillerød Hospital.
The ScanID gives us a lot of safety. Using a superior instrument like that is a convenient way of ensuring that our samples are always tracked correctly.
After scanning, they use the flowbot ONE for diluting the blood samples before transferring them to a 96-well PCR plate. scanID will already have send the data to the flowbot ONE software so it can track the moves.
“We pre-dilute 5 microliters of whole blood in 500 microliters of water. And then we transfer 5 microliters of the dilution to the 96-well PCR plate. It takes 20-30 minutes to prepare 88 samples for the thermal cycler,” explains Claus Juel Jensen.
Optimal safety and efficiency
The lab processes around a 100 samples per week. According to Claus Juel Jensen, that is not an overwhelming workload to perform manually, but it wouldn’t give the safety that is so critical in a diagnostics lab.
“Sample switching can occur when scanning and pipetting is done manually. This is serious at hospitals because it might lead to false diagnoses. So having an inadequate data tracking solution can have very critical consequences. That’s why we’ve been so happy with the ScanID. As we don’t have to move the samples individually to scan them, we can trust the results,” he explains.
Claus Juel Jensen also highlights that it can be difficult to find employees to do manual work like pipetting or scanning. “The unemployment rate among lab technicians is extremely low and we need great technologies like ScanID and the flowbot ONE to fill out their shoes so we can use their talents on more valuable work instead. Anything else would be a missed opportunity,” he finishes.
With ScanID as their new scanning partner, they ensure an elegant workflow and that the patients are in good hands.
Its scanning ability is fantastic. We receive all sorts of bad quality barcodes from different practices and there is no problem reading them. I’d be worried about mistakes if we didn’t have scanID and we’d have to double check everything to ensure that no errors had occurred.
ScanID gives us a much smoother workflow and relieves us from having to perform error control on everything which is bothersome and takes time.
Overall, scanID is great value for money. It’s inexpensive and we get a lot in return.
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scanID is available both with the flowbot ONE and as a stand-alone device.
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