Beckman Coulter is First Diagnostics Company to Offer Workflow Automation Specifically for Mid-volume Laboratories

The Right Fit for Mid-sized Labs

“When we look at automation for our labs it's a balancing act between system throughput capacity, test menu and footprint of the system,” said Afruj Ruf, managing director at Integrated Pathology Solutions LLP, Airedale NHS Foundation Trust. “At the Harrogate District Hospital site, we knew that a large automated system will be too large and excessive and a standalone system doesn't give us the streamlined workflow we want. What we needed was a compact automation system that reduced the number of steps, requiring minimum human intervention and generated a valid result at first pass so that our lab professionals are not moving samples around but performing the valuable scientific tasks they are trained for. From its compact footprint and minimizing manual work by 80%, to intelligent routing that makes sure our acute patients get their results faster than routine ones, the DxA 5000 Fit was just the right fit for us."

In a survey, lab directors and managers were asked to identify the key challenges hospital labs are facing. The results found that staffing (26 percent) and turnaround time (23 percent) were identified as top priorities⁷. Automation plays a key role in helping to address many of these issues while enabling precious resources to focus on high-value, clinical tasks – this has proven particularly true during the COVID-19 pandemic⁸.

“For large laboratories, TLA is a reality today. However, for medium-volume labs like ours that process fewer than 4,000 tests per day, comprehensive workflow-automation solutions haven’t been an option,” said Susan Enciso, System Supervisor of Chemistry, Excela Health. “Beckman Coulter’s DxA 5000 Fit solution is the right fit for us. It has a flexible design which is important in a lab like ours where space is a precious commodity; and reduces our manual process steps by up to 80%, helping us meet today’s unprecedented need for COVID-19 and routine tests.”

With the DxA 5000 Fit, mid-sized labs can enjoy the same benefits as larger-volume labs:

• Comprehensive workflow automation to reduce up to 80% of manual steps through pre-analytical, analytical and post-analytical automation⁹, conserving precious human resources to do higher-value clinical work
• Intelligent routing with dynamically calculated route planning for rapid and consistent TAT, with STATs always prioritized to deliver results faster
• Flexible design that can be adapted to meet a mid-volume lab’s space and infrastructure constraints

“We chose the DxA 5000 Fit because it offers us end-to-end automation and will automate a lot of the pre- and post-analytical routine work our skilled technologists spend their time doing,” said Dr. Hervé Vermeulen, lab director at Centre Hospitalier de Calais. “We look forward to lower, more consistent TATs and significant efficiency gains from the industry’s most comprehensive pre-analytical sample-quality assessment combined with automated pre-analytical sample processing and connected chemistry and immunoassay analyzers.”

The DxA 5000 Fit is authorized for sale in the United States and most European and Asian countries.

“At Beckman Coulter, we believe that medium-size labs should be able to leverage the benefits of automation to address their challenges. Just because your lab is not processing a higher number of samples, doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice the benefits of intelligent laboratory automation and settle for a marginally automated workcell-plus solution,” said Dr. Peter Soltani, senior vice president & general manager, hematology, urinalysis & workflow information technology solutions at Beckman Coulter. “This is why we have launched DxA 5000 Fit, the first compact workflow automation solution that’s the right fit for mid-volume labs because automation should be for all labs.”

Learn more about Beckman Coulter’s family of automation solutions and the DxA 5000 Fit on our website at www.beckmancoulter.com/automation.

You can access the media package for DxA 5000 Fit, which contains product videos, articles and other assets at www.beckmancoulter.com/DxA5000Fit-Media.