Lab needs driving coagulation analyzer market

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Valerie Neff Newitt

January 2018—Customer wish lists help to define every generation of coagulation analyzers, test menus, and related technologies. That’s evident in the recent and upcoming launches and the ongoing work of the companies whose analyzers are profiled in this issue in the 2018 coagulation analyzer product guide.

At Helena Laboratories, “We hear demands for easier connectivity, smaller sample sizes, greater availability of more specialty tests, like low-molecular-weight heparin and direct thrombin inhibitors,” says Theresa Peveto, BSCLS, MT, hemostasis product manager. “And everyone wants a good activated partial thromboplastin time point-of-care test that is as reliable as an in-laboratory test.” Toward that end, Peveto says Helena Laboratories is well into the development of a new analyzer with an especially broad platform that will include “new assays not normally seen.”

For instrumentation, the smaller the better. “We will see the industry move toward smaller devices, something like a glucometer—quick, smaller sample sizes, smaller strips, less dependent on technique and technology,” Peveto predicts.

Maria Peluso-Lapsley, MBA, senior product marketing manager in North America for Siemens Healthineers’ chronic disease portfolio, notes that many customers are expanding and gaining more oversight of their hospital-affiliated offices and clinics. “They need simple solutions that don’t require a lot of training. They want small analyzers that can transmit data, directly or indirectly via middleware, into their hospital information system and ultimately into their electronic medical record systems. Additionally, they want technology that does not disrupt flow, be it patient flow or workflow in an office or clinic.”

For the health care networks that want to standardize equipment across the network, “our customers want an end-to-end enterprisewide solution,” Peluso-Lapsley says.

At Instrumentation Laboratory, “We have asked customers, ‘What do you need and what would make your life better?’” says Venita Shirley, MBA, MT(ASCP), director of hemostasis marketing in North America. One answer, she says, is time-saving convenience. “In response we have reengineered many reagents to be liquid, ready to use with robust stability, eliminating reconstitution time, acclimation time, and repetitive manual pipetting.” HemosIL ReadiPlastin for prothrombin time testing on ACL Top and ACL Top Family 50 Series systems, for example, has onboard stability of 10 days, she says.

William Trolio, MBA, MT, vice president and chief scientific officer, of Bio/Data, says shortening processing time is paramount to his customers. “Specimen processing time is one of the more frustrating parts of platelet testing,” he says. “Platelets are only good for about four hours. . . . And you may beat up the platelets so much during the preparation that you won’t get the right results due to platelet activation or compromised sample conditions—icterus, hemolysis, or lipemia.”