Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Tim Cheyne — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:45:22 GMT

Thanks, Bob. I am on the verge of buying a Monza but, to judge by the posts on this board, our needs are different to the average SA practice.

Tim.

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Rob Davis — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:41:31 GMT

[quote user="Tim Cheyne"]

It is nearly three weeks since the last post on in-house biochemistry analysers and we have all been pre-occupied with the Panorama programme but has anybody had demos during that time on which they are prepared to comment and report?

Tim.

[/quote]

We're having a demonstration on the vetscan2 tomorrow - will post comments in due course.

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Tim Cheyne — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:51:22 GMT

Tim.

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Tim Cheyne — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:11:26 GMT

I had a long and interesting discussion with our local Randox agent yesterday afternoon but unfortunately without sight of the machine. For my purpose, batch testing in a laboratory, the Rx Monza sounds a good machine but more expensive than apparently equivalent competitors. Of course, out here I cannot lease but need to buy outright and I cannot expect much support except over the telephone or by e-mail, although that is true of nearly everything here and has not been a problem in the past. It is amazing what you can repair when pushed!

Unless Randox can produce some juicy inducement over and above what is offered at present I cannot see the Monza satisfying the posters here who really want a fully automatic machine, push a button to start it and come back twenty minutes later to collect a full profile, even though their advertising and sales talk seems mainly directed at such limited use SA practices. On the other hand and to be fair, apart from the various brands already mentioned in this thread, there are very few fully automatic analysers on the market that are not too hideously expensive for the average practice to consider.

Tim.

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Rob Davis — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:30:48 GMT

[quote user="Paul Herriot"]Currently at Randox we have looked into making one test bottle of reagent for tests with a shorter shelf life, thos removing the need for wastage. Hopefully in a few months this will be in place.[/quote]

That would potentially make a significant difference to those tests which it would be worth running in house, and would make the machine much more appealing (to me anyway!).

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Paul Herriot — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 14:24:19 GMT

Hi Rob,

With the Bile Acid kits the shelf life of the kit is 10 months and is stable for 28 days once opened.

Currently at Randox we have looked into making one test bottle of reagent for tests with a shorter shelf life, thos removing the need for wastage. Hopefully in a few months this will be in place.

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Rob Davis — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:30:29 GMT

[quote user="Paul Herriot"]Also with the Monza having a wider test menu you will be able to run certain tests in house, for example bile acids. A cost for this test would be £15.00 on the system, giving you a profit opportunity and also a faster turn around time, rather than waiting 24 hours for a lab to report back results.[/quote]

Presumably this cost would be £15 per test IF you are using the whole bottle of reagent (I believe 4-5 tests within 28 days - is that correct?). If you are only running one or two tests per month then it would be uneconomical to do them in house. This was the problem I have previously had with the synermed machine some years ago, it was capable of doing various tests such as bile acids and fructosamine, but we didn't run them often enough to make it worth while.

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Paul Herriot — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:15:24 GMT

Hi Rob,

Thank you very much for taking the time to meet me last week. It was a pleasure to visit your impressive surgery and to also meet some of your team. I got back to a very wet and grey Northern Ireland late on Friday night, having left the sunshine in Bury St Edmunds

At Randox we do understand peoples concern over the wet chemistry and manual steps involved in running the monza. But we believe that the accuarcy of the results and the wider test menu on the monza off sets that.

Also with the Monza having a wider test menu you will be able to run certain tests in house, for example bile acids. A cost for this test would be £15.00 on the system, giving you a profit opportunity and also a faster turn around time, rather than waiting 24 hours for a lab to report back results.

At Randox headquarters we do have a dedicated support team for the RX Monza and full training is also given with any new system purchased.

I do appreciate your feedback on the Monza, and hopefully by taking the system for the weeks trail this will ease you concerns.

Kind Regards

Paul

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Tim Cheyne — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:02:17 GMT

<(reagents need to be accurately reconstituted and pipetted by hand)>

Over the years I have had no trouble reconstituting Randox reagents but it is worth considering using suitable sizes of automatic (preferably adjustable) air displacement pipettes such as Finnpipettes with disposable plastic tips to reconstitute the dried reagents. You will probably find also that Randox produce a stable liquid reagent for at least some of the tests that you want.......and of course, with wet chemistry, you are not compelled to stick with Randox reagents, there are others, equally reliable, on the market.

One point you should watch is your likely daily demand for a particular reagent and consequently the size of the pack that you need to reconstitute. In my lab we work with batches of samples and usually reconstitute 10 ml or 20 ml packs; you might find that there is less waste with a 3 ml.pack.

I shall be interested to hear how you get on because I am looking for another analyser and am considering the Monza.

Tim.

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Rob Davis — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:51:41 GMT

We've just had a demonstration from Randox on the Monza (Paul, I know you'll read this so consider it as feedback, and feel free to correct anything I get wrong!).

Overall the machine looks very good - compact, good range of tests available, probably reasonably economical, though we haven't gone into the financial side in detail yet.

My main concern is it's lack of automation - each individual test has to be run consecutively which will take up a considerable amount of nurse time (estimated at 20-25 minutes for a 12 screen profile, and this is time at the machine, not doing something else while you wait like with the vettest). There also appear to be several points at which human error could come into play (reagents need to be accurately reconstituted and pipetted by hand).

I think it would be an excellent machine if one person can be the dedicated user, but in a busy practice where several different people may be required to run samples, I think the process will be too complicated, and even if the machine is very accurate, human error may come into play.

Support sounds good, though one never knows until you've needed to try it! Quality control seems to be well managed (the company appears to have much more experience on the human side including testing for banned substances etc).

Having said that, I would not rule it out yet. They would be happy for us to have a machine on trial for a week, and that would be the best way to see if our my concerns are vaild.

I will report further once we've had demonstrations from other machines.

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Caroline Ibrahim — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:39:57 GMT

Hello,

I am one of the marketing executives at Randox. Just wanted to let you know that if anyone is interested in a demo of the RX monza or requires more info please contact us as per below, and ask to be put through to the RX Team (in sales). If contacting by email, please mention that you found us on vetsurgeon.org.

Phone: +44 28 9442 2413

Website: www.randox.com

Email: marketing@randox.com

Thanks...

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Bob Russell — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:46:26 GMT

For the Vetscan we deal with QCR/Trio - they can be grumpy on the phone but the installation/support on-site has been good.

QCR/Trio 01904 488507

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Bob Russell — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:42:13 GMT

Be very careful if you are tempted to go for an Idexx package. We would have been locked into a five year contract committed to monthly reagent purchases twice what we are paying now. This was unclear on the quotation for the package we were looking at.

As always check the small print.

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Bob Russell — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 10:16:14 GMT

We have just upgraded to the Vetscan HM5 and we are all chuffed to bits with it - it even makes reassuring 'chirping noises'!!!!

We had the older HMT and treated the results with a degree of caution but so far this is a great improvment for haematology.

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Kate Richardson — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 21:54:55 GMT

Thanks for your input so far! We have had a demo from Woodleys and were impressed but it was a bit pricey. Have also had the hard sales pitch from Idexx to update our current system and not overly keen. Our biochem currently is Vettest, and a QBC (which is rubbish in my opinion), we have a Woodleys Istat machine. Will look into the others especially Vetscan as some positive feedback on them from here. Didn't realise there was another thread on here about in house lab machines so apologise if you are all repeating yourselves! A decent reliable in house haematology machine would be my main immediate want. Have had too many erroneous results on the QBC to believe anything it spits out now!

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Tim Cheyne — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:20:32 GMT

[quote user="Kate Richardson"]

Do they do haematolgy as well as I think Randox only do biochem? Do you have any contact details for them?

[/quote]

Yes, Randox do only biochemistry, not haematolgy, as far as I know. They have an extensive list of reagents, many of which I have used over the years and I am quite prepared to recommend them. I have no experience of their machines though and at the moment I am trying to find out more about the 'Monza' (advertised on this very site!).

Tim.

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Rob Davis — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:50:18 GMT

Quantum is from Woodley (01204 669033). We are also getting them to demonstrate their new epoc hand-held analyser.

NWL (07880 745622) - Nik Watson

Vetscan (vetlab) - 02798 874567

Menarini - 01189 444100

I'll keep you posted

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Rob Davis — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:19:44 GMT

Not sure off the top of my head. Our head nurse is organising things, so I'll get contact details from her and let you know

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Kate Richardson — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:13:56 GMT

[quote user="Rob Davis"] Quantum, vetscan and NWL [/quote]

Do they do haematolgy as well as I think Randox only do biochem? Do you have any contact details for them?

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Rob Davis — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 15:04:07 GMT

We are also organising demos for Quantum, vetscan and NWL machine over the next month or so, so I'll let you know what we think of these too.

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Kate Richardson — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 14:14:59 GMT

We have a demo this week also. I hadn't heard of them until recently, so just wondered if anyone had any practical experience of them, cos am sure we will only hear the positives from their reps! I'll let you know what we think.

Kate

Re: Any experience of Randox in house lab machines?

Rob Davis — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 10:40:34 GMT

No experience yet, but we are in the same position and will hopefully be arranging a demonstration soon - I'll let you know once we've had one.