Motryx and LabQuality offer external quality assessment for sample transport
Motryx and LabQuality will jointly offer a new EQA scheme for Pre-analytics of Pneumatic Sample Transport.
Product Update: Clinical Prediction with VitalQC
We’re excited to release a set of new features that take VitalQC from measuring transport vibration to directly predicting transport-related clinical impact, including analyte-specific sample rejection. VitalQC is 70% more time efficient and 40% more cost-effective than traditional solutions to test, monitor and improve transport systems and determine their effect on specimen integrity and rejection rates.
New AABB Guidelines for Validating Pneumatic Tube Systems for Blood Products
The Updated AABB (American Association for Blood Banks) Guide to Pneumatic Tube Delivery System Validation and use for Blood Components is now available, which specifically include the use of data loggers to validate and check transport systems.
Motryx announces partnership with Aerocom
Simple and reliable validation of Pneumatic Tube systems for blood sample integrity monitoring
Halifax, Canada, December 2020 – Motryx, provider of blood transport validation and verification services, today announced a partnership with Aerocom, a global leader in Pneumatic Tube Systems, for the joint provision of VitalQC – a quality assurance tool to validate pneumatic tube installations for safe and effective transport of blood samples with minimal impacts on integrity and diagnostics.
New study emphasizes need for a straightforward, automated and clinically meaningful solution for PTS validation
Accelerometers provide a robust and repeatable way to measure transport quality; however, the majority of commercially available data loggers are designed for broad application, not specifically to relate transport data to clinical specimen integrity.
VitalQC is specifically designed to address the items highlighted in a new paper - read more to find out exactly how.
Paper: Data loggers used to determine hemolysis thresholds for Pneumatic Tube Systems
Streichert et al. transported blood samples through a PTS together with a mini data logger with continuous measurements of acceleration, to show that acceleration measurements correlate with PTS speed and directly related to the degree of hemolysis.
“Assessment of 3-axis acceleration by use of data loggers can be used to identify preanalytical deviations that result from the transportation of blood samples in PTSs.”
Paper: Determination of Hemolysis Thresholds by the Use of Data Loggers in Pneumatic Tube Systems, Clinical Chemistry
Clinical and Diagnostic Consequences of Specimen Rejection
Specimen rejection for e.g., high hemolysis, results in 1) high rates of specimen recollection, 2) delays in test result availability, and 3) high rates of specimen test abandonment.
As part of the College of American Pathologists Q-Probes Analysis of 78 Clinical Laboratories, Karcher and Lehman evaluated >2 million sample accessions which resulted in 4,794 rejections -- 96.5% of which were blood. Specimen processing was delayed by 41-93 minutes due to sample rejection, with a median 91-min delay for hospitals with > 450 beds.
“Specimen rejection leads to a high rate of recollection of specimens, including repeated phlebotomy ..., causing discomfort and potential complications in the affected patients.”
Paper: Clinical Consequences of Specimen Rejection, Karcher and Lehman, Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2014;138:1003–1008; doi: 10.5858/arpa.2013-0331-CP
Paper: Comparison of Four 3-Axis-Accelerometers for Monitoring Hospital Pneumatic Tube Systems
A recent study in the Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine evaluated accelerometers that can be used to validate hospital pneumatic tube systems (PTS) to predict and prevent errors caused by sample hemolysis from transport. VitalQC is only recently commercially available, and therefore wasn’t evaluated as part of the manuscript.