CAP TODAY Pathology/Laboratory Medicine/Laboratory Management
New tests, new features
[printfriendly]Anne Ford
Busy as they were preparing for the annual American Association for Clinical Chemistry meeting last month, several vendors of in vitro blood gas analyzers found time to tell CAP TODAY about some of the features they’re planning to unveil in the next year or so.
Take Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics. The company, says Jennifer Stockman, associate marketing director for critical care and point of care informatics, intends to introduce numerous features on its RapidPoint 500 blood gas system, namely, “additional vent settings and custom demographic fields on the instrument software, a smaller 100-test-size measurement cartridge for lower-volume testing, and enhanced wireless capabilities for more robust wireless connectivity throughout the hospital.”
The notice of these forthcoming features comes on the heels of another Siemens announcement. In June, the company received FDA clearance for pleural fluid pH testing on the RapidPoint 500 system, thereby “providing U.S. laboratories and point-of-care coordinators with an important new diagnostic tool for critical care situations,” Stockman says.
Meanwhile, in development at Instrumentation Laboratory is an expanded test menu for the company’s GEM Premier platform. The menu will include BUN, creatinine, and measured tCO2, says critical care marketing director William Manchester. “Additionally, scheduled for release next year are new software enhancements for our GEMweb Plus custom connectivity solution,” he adds. “It will offer a new suite of enhanced features to address regulatory compliance, operator competency, and workflow efficiency, including an enhanced report engine to increase flexibility in operator management.”
The news at Radiometer America, says marketing communications manager Jan Weaver, is that “we have wireless capability for our ABL90 Flex point-of-care analyzer in development.” The ABL90 Flex is a compact blood gas and acute care analyzer that delivers results on 16 parameters in 35 seconds using 65 µL of blood.
Alere reports that it’s currently developing BUN and measured tCO2 for its Epoc blood analysis system. In December, the company received 510(k) clearance for measured creatinine and chloride, eGFR, eGFR-a, AGap, and AgapK.
As for Roche, the company continues to offer its Cobas b 123 mobile blood gas analyzer, which features a four-level clot protection system, reagent packs that can be transferred between like devices, and an assay menu that includes lactate.
CAP TODAY’s guide to in vitro blood gas analyzers includes products from the aforementioned companies and from Abbott Point of Care, ITC, Medica, Nova Biomedical, and Opti Medical Systems. Readers interested in a particular system should confirm it has the stated features and capabilities.
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Anne Ford is a writer in Evanston, Ill.