How to Choose the Right Portable Blood Analyzer for Your Clinical Setting

A physician’s role often extends beyond patient interaction to ensuring that they have the most efficient, precise, and innovative diagnostic tools at their disposal. Over the past few years, portable blood analyzers have come to the fore, promising a new era of diagnostics, especially in urgent care settings, outpatient departments, and for house-bound patients.

However, selecting the right portable blood analyzer can be a challenging task given the scarcity of these devices in the market. Here, we’ll provide a roadmap for the selection process that can help narrow down your options.

Why Consider a Portable Blood Analyzer?

Traditionally, highly complex blood tests have been confined to high-end labs. This forces healthcare providers to sacrifice speed and accessibility in order to gather the test diagnostics and information that they need for crucial decisions.

However, as our medical technology advances, this is no longer the case. Care providers can now use instruments like HemoScreen to get lab-grade accuracy at the point of care. And unlike most point-of-care blood analyzers, HemoScreen does not use reagents, making it fully portable.

This leads to an incredible improvement in speed and efficiency. Traditional lab blood analyzers may take anywhere from hours to days to produce results. Portable blood analyzers, on the other hand, can generate accurate results within minutes, significantly enhancing patient satisfaction and care outcomes. This is especially impactful in emergency care, where the ability to test a patient’s blood en route to the hospital can save precious time.

Portable devices also bring diagnostic capabilities to the patient’s side, be it at the hospital, in an emergency vehicle, or even at the patient’s home. This reduces the need for patient transport and minimizes potential delays in diagnosis and treatment. The compact size and ease of use are especially ideal for point-of-care CBC analysis in decentralized, remote, and rural settings, where access to a full-scale laboratory is limited.

Key Considerations When Comparing Portable Blood Analyzers

With few portable blood analyzers currently available in the market, it’s critical to have a checklist of what to look for when selecting the right device. Your exact needs may vary depending on your use case or clinical setting.

• Ease of Use: The device should be user-friendly with minimal training requirements for the staff.
• Maintenance Needs: Low maintenance requirements can save considerable time and resources, especially in a busy clinical setting. Devices that do not require regular calibration are particularly advantageous.
• Range of Analysis: The device should be capable of analyzing a comprehensive range of parameters that are relevant to your clinical practice, such as 5-part differential WBC analysis.
• Speed of Results: A device that provides quick results is invaluable in urgent care settings.
• Portability: The device’s size, weight, and power requirements should align with your intended use, especially if it’s planned for various settings or for house calls.
• Reagent or Cartridge-based: Some devices use reagents for analysis, which may limit portability due to storage and stability issues. The recurring costs and management required with reagents also adds to the total cost of ownership. In comparison, cartridge-based systems like HemoScreen are portable and user-friendly.

One such device that meets all of these considerations is the HemoScreen from PixCell Medical. Our user-friendly instrument provides lab-grade results in just 3-5 minutes. Since it’s small and compact, you can place HemoScreen on a cart or in a vehicle to take it directly to a patient’s side. HemoScreen does not use reagents – even after moving it around, our cartridge-based system requires no maintenance or calibration.

Simplifying Blood Testing for Clinical Settings Everywhere

Despite the limited options in the market, adding a portable blood analyzer to your clinical arsenal can significantly enhance patient care by delivering immediate and accurate blood analysis.

With the right portable instrument supporting your healthcare setting, you can get results truly at the point of care – whether that’s on board an emergency vehicle, at a patient’s home, or somewhere else.

HemoScreen from PixCell Medical is transforming blood testing for physicians everywhere. Our fast, portable instrument provides lab-grade analysis in a matter of minutes, making blood tests extremely accessible. Contact us today to see a demo and learn how HemoScreen can work in your clinical setting.

(*) Please note: training must be defined by local, state and federal regulations. In the USA, training is defined for CLIA moderate complexity devices.