Beckman Coulter DxA 5000 total laboratory automation solution

The latest addition to Beckman Coulter’s automation portfolio, the DxA 5000 total laboratory automation solution, has achieved European CE Mark and China Food and Drug Administration approval. The product is designed to deliver rapid and consistent turnaround time, provide comprehensive pre-analytical sample quality detection, and reduce the number of manual processing steps to improve laboratory efficiency.

With specimen centrifugation typically the most time-consuming pre-analytical activity in the laboratory, the system utilises a universal centrifugation protocol that reduces the pre-analytical processing time by up to 73% for connected analysers across multiple disciplines. It also leverages dynamic system software, utilising intelligent routing to bring automated patient-centric workflow to the laboratory. By understanding the tests requested, sample volume available and real-time analyser capacity and status, the product continuously calculates the most expeditious route for every patient sample — both STAT and routine.

The system is designed with a sharp focus on sample quality assessment, screening each sample at multiple points to help laboratories reduce the risk of errors. In 3 s, the system detects patient tube parameters such as volume, sample identification, tube type, cap colour, orders pending and tube weight. It is designed to check for sample volume at three separate points — pre-centrifugation, post-centrifugation and prior to sample storage — to continually ensure sufficient volume is available for the tests ordered. This reduces the potential for release of erroneous results and can help accelerate time to result by alerting the laboratory when a new patient sample is needed.

The product simultaneously manages high volumes of multiple disciplinary requests, with a large variety of patient sample tubes and sizes, without impact to overall system throughput or STAT turnaround time. By automating sample processing steps, it supports laboratories in delivering a higher number of results per hour with the same staffing level, reducing the number of manual steps in sample processing to as few as one.