Wednesday, May 24, 2023
University of Leipzig Medical Center is a maximum-care hospital with >1,400 beds. The hospital has the second largest Pneumatic Transport System (PTS) in Germany which is 25 kilometres long.
As the reliable and fast transport of samples from the ward to the laboratory is one important part of the the preanalytical process, it is important to have a direct connection from the emergency (A&E) department to the central laboratory in the Institute of Laboratory Medicine.
A new automated system had the opportunity to include the Tempus600® system in an automated workflow so that samples can be brought directly from A&E to the laboratory. “The concept for a direct and safe single sample transport directly into the laboratory automation is an important improvement of the preanalytical process” says Dr. Ronny Baber, Medical Devices Representative in the central laboratory of University of Leipzig Medical Center, Institute of Laboratory Medicine and Head of the Leipzig Medical Biobank.
The speed of the Tempus600® system is another benefit. The transportation time with Tempus600® is approximately 10 metre/second per sample tube depending on the weight and diameter of the tube and the total transport time from A&E to the laboratory is around a minute. With the PTS system, the transportation time for laboratory samples from A&E to the laboratory was 5-15 minutes.
In June 2020, a Tempus600® Vita was installed in A&E. The system is connected directly to GLP in the central laboratory via the 580-metre-long piping.
The installation of the Tempus600® went smoothly but although the system is easy to operate, users had difficulty remembering to orientate the samples correctly when inserting them into the system's inlet. To help guide the users, pictures were placed on the wall showing how to insert the samples correctly. In addition, they were only allowed to use samples with a minimum diameter of 13 mm.
“The use of Tempus600® is simply a matter of training. It’s a very stable system and now we see very few mistakes, and these are typically made by new users of the system,” says Ronny Baber.
Tempus600® has improved workflow on the wards and the new working methods have freed up staff resources to focus on other tasks and on patients.
In total, 200-300 samples are sent from A&E with Tempus600® daily. The time from dispatching the sample to when the test result/report is received in A&E is e.g. 8 minutes for blood counts. Applying the PTS it is approx. 35 minutes, because the samples need a longer time to come into the central lab, have to be retrieved from the capsules and placed on the track. Now the process is much faster and without any manual work step.
“Staff are really happy about the Tempus600® because they just need to put in the samples and leave them. With the PTS you can only send the capsules once and then you have to wait for the next capsule. With Tempus600®, staff can insert samples continuously up to 42 samples at a time and it is easy to insert samples into the system and continue working. If the Tempus600® system is down, staff are eager to get it up and running again,” says Ronny Baber.
The combination of two systems – the PTS and the Tempus600® – works well, as one of the systems always acts as a backup when the other system is under maintenance.
“The reliability of the Tempus600® is higher than what we experienced previously, and the maintenance of the system is very easy and not really an issue for us. The cleaning process is done once a month and the maintenance from SARSTEDT works well,” says Ronny Baber.
In the future, the Institute of Laboratory Medicine likes to expand the Tempus600® and have a few more lines to the critical infrastructures like intensive care for adults and children.
“The GLP system has six Tempus600® lines and five of them are still available. The request is sent, but it is a time-consuming process and a future project. Let’s see if we can make it happen!” says Ronny Baber.
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Automation of the pre-analytical process with Tempus600® at University of Leipzig Medical Center;
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