Echo vs Provue

[bday]

I am interested in hearing about your experiences with automation - we are looking at both the provue and the echo. Any comments, likes or dislikes would be appreciated.

Please, no vendors, salespeople or consultants - I am looking for actual technologists, supervisors or managers who are utilizing automation!

Thanks

[knittie5]

i thought the turnaround time on the provue was too long. it is easy to run but not too easy to troubleshoot. ours seemed to have several electronic problems, which made it stop working. we did not have the maintenance contract that covered weekends so it was a huge pain, if the provue went down on a friday night. the provue is made for places that could run large batches of samples that were not stats. we were a smaller tertiary care hospitals that had stats all day long but no big runs like outpatient prenatals or surgery pre-quals.

[L106]

Please, no vendors, salespeople or consultants - I am looking for actual technologists, supervisors or managers who are utilizing automation!

Thanks

Oh, you mean people who actually use it???? (I couldn't pass up the sarcastic comment!)

We have an Echo. It was over 25 years since I've had my hands inside of any instrumentation/automation, and after only minimum training I am the chief operator/trouble-shooter/repair person. (Scary, huh?) Seriously, maintenance and most repairs are very easy.

Edited August 17, 2009 by L106
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[John C. Staley]

I think if you look around under equipment posts you will find a number of threads that should answer most of your quesitons.:eyepoppin

[Likewine99]

We have a ProVue and love it. I am a supervisor and work the bench in a Level II trauma center that does about 25-30 T&S a day. Haven't had the problems that knittie5 has had and like anything else, once you get the hang of it you will like it. Once you go automated you wonder how you ever got anything done the old way.

E-mail me at Mary_Mendel@ssmhc.com or feel free to call anytime: 314-344-6859 an I can give you the in's and out's of how it works for us.

[schorj]

Our hospital system, with two large hospital blood banks started using the ECHO's about a year ago. One hospital blood bank was previously performing manual gel and the other tube testing.

The installation and training went very smoothly at both blood banks. We have had no major problems in the first year of operation. The techs at both blood banks love it, even the "die hard" 35 year tube testing techs!

We do not think that we are missing any clinically significant antibodies and we are not picking up as many room temp anti-M's and other room temp antibodies, which we were picking up with tube and manual gel. We also are not picking up as many "non specific IgG" reactions.

I would highly recommend that you seriously consider the ECHO.

[Phylle]

We've had an Echo operating since April and love it. We did have some problems with a board but Immucor was very responsive and fixed it. We do mostly type and screens, panels and unit retypes.

[mawomack]

We loved our Gel & had 3 Provues at our 7 hospital system. But, we converted to Echos (7) and Galileo (1) because of:

1) We could place automation at all of our 7 hospitals with a reagent rental deal

2) We could guarantee cost stabilization for 5 years (which Ortho would not do)

3) We could finally automate antibody panels, which has saved a ton of tech time.

4) Immucor is actually listening to the customer and is making improvements on the next versions of the instruments based on what we, the customer, has to say. Ortho hasn't responded with any hardware or software updates in quite some time.

[AMcCord]

We've been live with Echo since Jan this year and love it. I'm the primary operator/trainer/troubleshooter. I have never been of the chemist mind set, so when I tell you that the instrument is easy to work with, I'm not kidding. My techs switched from gel with no problems, learned the software very quickly and like using the instrument. It has little features built in that help save you from making dumb mistakes (putting reagents on in the wrong place or leaving the reagent caps on, for instance) A recent upgrade to allow co-mingling of test batches means that it runs faster than ever. You can put on a test, start that, then keep right on loading and ordering test after test. Then you walk away. When it gets to the right point in it's test process, it will start the next batch, then the next, and so on, not waiting to finish the first batch. Almost random access like a chem analyzer. Our workload means we process in pairs when possible, sometimes singly and it works great for us. Customer support is great.

[kmh76]

We have had the Echo for 2 years now and love it. Very easy to use, can program stats into it and can do panels. The time it has gone down in 2 years has been maybe 2 times, other than that we have used blud direct and let immucor Tech Support look for the problem. We do 1200 Type/Screens a month. I only wish we had 2 instruments but for what we have used it for it has been great.

[John C. Staley]

We've been live with Echo since Jan this year and love it. I'm the primary operator/trainer/troubleshooter. I have never been of the chemist mind set, so when I tell you that the instrument is easy to work with, I'm not kidding. My techs switched from gel with no problems, learned the software very quickly and like using the instrument. It has little features built in that help save you from making dumb mistakes (putting reagents on in the wrong place or leaving the reagent caps on, for instance) A recent upgrade to allow co-mingling of test batches means that it runs faster than ever. You can put on a test, start that, then keep right on loading and ordering test after test. Then you walk away. When it gets to the right point in it's test process, it will start the next batch, then the next, and so on, not waiting to finish the first batch. Almost random access like a chem analyzer. Our workload means we process in pairs when possible, sometimes singly and it works great for us. Customer support is great.

Ann I told you that you would like it!! I'm glad to hear it's working well for you. I understand the guys at my old facility really like the interface with the new computer system.

[AMcCord]

John, you were so right! Now... if I could just get a computer to interface Echo with.

[bbbirder]

We have been live with our ECHO for several months now and we really like it. We converted from tube Blood types and manual gel testing (Antibody screens). Even the die-hards like it.

As others have said, it especially speeds up antibody panels.

I am looking forward to the antigen typing tests.

Still working on a fully functional interface (Blood types go across but not antibody screens yet... Thanks to Meditech!).

Linda Frederick