Method verification of two point-of-care testing platforms: the Abbott’s iSTAT and Timik’s EPOC blood analysis systems.

Background: A blood analysis with the particular focus of the blood gas status is often performed on critically ill patients to investigate whether there are any potential metabolic or respiratory causes underlying their condition. Utilizing a point-of-care analysis system for blood analysis close to the patient can enable faster analysis and thus accelerate medical decision-making. The aim of this project was to validate two point-of-care blood analysis instruments, EPOC and iSTAT. The blood analysis comprises 13 parameters (e.g. blood gases, hemoglobin, electrolytes), and some of which are calculated based on the original parameters. Method and materials: The study was performed on blood samples taken from 20 volunteers after informed consent. The volunteers were regular patients who were referred to the hospital to leave a blood test: at the phlebotomy department the patients were informed about the purpose of the study, and for those who agreed, additional sample designated for this study were taken. The samples were initially analyzed using the two point-of-care instruments (Epoc and iSTAT) and thereafter with two verification instruments (ABL90-flex PLUS and Cobas Pure), which were located in the laboratory of Bollnäs hospital. Precision measurements were conducted by doing five replicates for four of the parameters (sodium, base excess, pCO2, potassium) on five different occasions. Result: Both the Epoc and iSTAT-blood analysis system displayed satisfactory correlation with the reference instruments for each analyzed parameter. Further, the precision measurements showed that both Epoc and iSTAT displayed equivalent variation coefficient (CV%) as the reference methods. Conclusion: The result of this study showed that the point-of-care instruments performed well and displayed a high correlation with the reference instruments.