Automating a Dialysis Laboratory Part II: Dialysis Patient Sample Handling
Jim Pearce · JALA Journal of the Association for Laboratory Automation · 1999
Spectra Laboratories is a specialty laboratory with the majority of specimens originating from dialysis centers. In a previous article, “Automating a Dialysis Laboratory” (JALA, Nov. 1998), the unique nature of this patient population and the challenges of automating a dialysis laboratory were discussed. In that article, fibrin clotting was identified as one of the most significant challenges to automating front end automation. Because of the difficulty associated with automation of specimen handling when serum samples are frequently received clotted, we focused our efforts on management of result data and auto-edit of non-serum based testing.