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Guide to urinalysis instrumentation

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It is arguably the oldest discipline in pathology, but that title likely would not be enough to generate sentimental feelings among those at the receiving end of a urinalysis test. Yet urinalysis is a Cinderella of sorts: morphing from visual observation, to taste testing, to manual dipstick tests, to sleek, state-of-the-art instrumentation that can measure numerous substances.

Showing off their features on the following pages are 10 urinalysis instruments that, collectively, represent CAP TODAY’s first urinalysis systems product guide. The guide focuses on fully automated and semiautomated urine chemistry and microscopy/sediment instrumentation. We determined what information would be relevant to you, the reader, in part by discussing with industry representatives what we should ask and how to ask it. A special thank you to the product specialists at Arkray, Roche, and Siemens and to our trusted CAP TODAY informatics experts, Raymond D. Aller, MD, and Hal Weiner, for their guidance. And an enormous thank you to Leslie Williams, at Sysmex America, for her invaluable assistance each step of the way. We would appreciate feedback and suggestions on how to improve future editions of the guide.

But first writer Anne Ford reports what a few company representatives say about how urinalysis technology fits into laboratory automation and the importance of urinalysis. —Kimberly Carey, managing editor, kcarey@cap.org

December 2015—Not everyone shares Lauren Foohey’s idea of a good time, and she knows it.

“Performing urine sediment analysis under a microscope—I thought it was fun,” Foohey says with a laugh. She spent 10 years in the laboratory before ultimately becoming senior director of global marketing for point-of-care urinalysis and diabetes at Siemens Healthcare, Point of Care Diagnostics. “I just always thought it was fun to figure out, ‘What are these cells I’m looking at? Red cells, white cells, casts, crystals, amorphous phosphates, bacteria?’ It wasn’t often you’d see a parasite, so it was always a big deal when you did, and everybody would be screaming, ‘Look at this!’

“I loved doing it,” she continues. “But as fewer and fewer people are going into the medical technology field, it’s more difficult for lab managers and directors to find people who are trained to do urinalysis via microscopy and who want to do it.” That, she adds, is in part why demand for automation has increased.

But even as demand rises, “there seems to be variation in how urinalysis technology fits into full automation,” says Leslie Williams, urinalysis product manager for Sysmex America. “There are some urinalysis systems that have been incorporated into large automation systems, but I am not sure how common that is in practice. Usually customers will take our UF-1000i fully automated urine sediment analyzer and put it on an automation line, and then put the urine chemistry analyzer at some other point further down the line and run them that way. Our distributor, Siemens, sells the UF-1000i as part of an integrated urinalysis system, the Clinitek AUWi Pro automated urine workstation.”


Click here to access CAP TODAY’s online, interactive urinalysis instrumentation product guide.

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