Accelerated hematological testing for improved patient care

My name is Gary Tye. I'm a senior biomedical scientist, and I work at Blackpool Victoria Hospital.

The hematology lab is responsible for processing all the full blood count samples, and other hematological samples for the hospital and the GP services. Linked to the hospital, we have a tertiary leukemia unit which is responsible for treating all the patients within the Lancashire and Cumbria area, who have hematological malignancies.

The Aerospray, we use for staining blood films, bone marrow samples, CSF cytospins, fluid white counts, and we can also do malaria slides on them. The hematology ward requires urgent samples turned around quickly, and we can use the blood films to monitor blast counts which will look at the treatment of the cancer patients to ensure that the treatment that they're on is appropriate.

The Aerospray allows us to produce blood films, bone marrows, and cytospins in a standardized fashion. It's much, much quicker than our previous manual methods. The slides, when they are produced, are crystal clear, and effectively high-definition, which allows us to interpret the films correctly, and it can lead to treatment options for the hematology unit.

The Aerospray is going to allow us to produce the blood films in a timely manner. This would be advantageous to the patients. Anything that speeds up their treatment will be a benefit, and at the end of the day, patient care is what we're here for.

The Aerospray, we're quite happy with the technology. Maybe, in the future, we could look at a bigger model that could allow us to stain more films at once. We could also look at potentially getting the cytospin option which would allow us to do our own cytospins within the laboratory. Once technology improves, we will be looking to move on to bigger and better equipment, maybe tracking systems.

Anything that would speed up the process of samples through the laboratory and that would lead to improved patient outcomes is something we would be extremely interested in.