Has anyone validated antigen typing on the ECHO or Galileo? If so, are you willing to share you plan or offer references?

Had the reagents sent but couldn't get a straight answer about QC with 4 not using more reagent than the current + & = we do with tube and screening cells. Plan to weigh bottles before and after to see. Will let you know.

We validated it and run our antigen typing on the ECHO. You do need to run qc using all four WBCorQC vials, which goes well beyond the required pos, neg control for each antigen. You will use a little more reagents but, in my opinion, the ease, standardization of process and relatively rapid turn-around makes it worth it! We love it here. :D:D

I am just about to role out our validated Echo phenotyping. We ran 20 (mix of POS and NEG) samples for each antigen (C, c, E, e, K). I accomplished this easily by pulling historically neg/pos units that were getting shipped in from our blood supplier, as our shipping reports contain the historical antigen typing info. for each unit.

Something to remember when deciding whether or not to automate a process is to perform an overall value analysis. Not every cost savings measure consists of lowering "direct" costs (as in the amount of money spent on reagents each year). There is a significant time savings brought about by automation and therefore "indirect" costs are saved and that can add up too. For example, even if you might spend slightly more $$ on reagents each year, you might in turn free up several minutes of tech time each day. If this is the case, the time savings might allow your department to absorb higher test volumes without increasing staff...which will in turn have a direct $$ benefit to your facility.

I haven't validated yet, but I am looking forward to being able to screen units for E and c with the Echo. Just those two would save a lot of tech time. Anti-E and anti-c are the top 2 on our antibody hit parade.