New Lab Equipment at PVH
 A new piece of equipment has been installed at Penobscot Valley Hospital’s Laboratory which should lead to quicker results and more overall efficiency. The Dimension Xpand Plus Integrated System arrived at the hospital earlier this year. The lab expects to be utilizing the machine by the first part of April.
Laboratory Director Scott Warner says, “This is a significant instrument upgrade to our system. The Xpand design combines chemistry and what we call ‘immunoassay’ tests. This essentially gives us two analyzers in one, saving time, effort, and cost.” For the doctors, the most important improvement is knowing the completion time of certain tests.
Chemistry tests include glucose, creatinine, electrolytes, and others. The immunoassay tests are more specialized and include pregnancy, thyroid, drug, and cardiac testing. Combining the two instruments is a good way to save money but also reduce the chance of error. That’s because instead of doing multiple tests separately, there is one sample, one barcode, one instrument, and one connection to the hospital computer system. This sort of technology is becoming more common in labs which need to offer a broad range of tests while reducing costs for themselves and the patient.
“I’m excited about this new analyzer,” says Warner. “It represents a significant upgrade that will help the staff work more efficiently.” Warner says greater automation will give them more time to spend on other tasks, ultimately improving patient care.
“This is an industry in which we must constantly evolve and improve the services we provide”, says CEO David A. Shannon. “The new Dimension Xpand Plus, which we recently started using, helps us improve our productivity, and it keeps PVH on the cutting edge of laboratory technology.”
For more information on this and other PVH news stories,
contact Allison Bankston at 794-7124 or abankston@pvhme.org
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