2024 Winter Newsletter - Flipbook - Page 6
Do You Remember?
Stories from the Lab
The hospital where I interned and eventually worked at for 13 years...had no automation and every tube had to be hand-fed to the instrument
and results were printed out on an impact card printer that had carbon paper between the layers (I now work in one of the largest automated
labs in the world!).
Around 1982 or 83 we were building a new hospital and began upgrading our technology. We purchased a Sysmex CC-720 which was my first
experience with “automation”. The tubes were uncapped, loaded on a carousel which rotated under the aspiration tip. A device would lift the
tube up to the flexible aspiration tube, which would then vibrate rapidly in the sample to mix it (almost like a Mixmaster), then aspirate the
sample, lower it, and the carousel would rotate to the next sample and repeat the process. I do not recall how we kept track of the sample IDs,
or how it rinsed between samples, but there was a way. At the time it was truly amazing. We had a smaller Sysmex for a backup (CC-180?) I
have been in love with Sysmex ever since.
- Pamela Ward
6 | NEWS
