Scenario: In order to improve patient access and throughput, a management review of the requirements for an emergency department in a small regional hospital without on-site pathology has established the need to provide POCT for blood gases. You have been asked by your manager to provide recommendations for the selection of an appropriate POCT device for these tests.

You must find at least 5 different point of care test devices from different companies and compare these devices in 15 different criteria such as, type of sample, accuracy, size…etc. and you must write these information in excel sheet.

Then you must chose only one best device:
Provide justification for your choice of device:

To do this you will need to develop a selection criteria to compare the available devices. Then you will need to summarise your recommendations and consider any on-going operational procedures required in order to provide quality results for patient testing.

Include in your answer recommendations with regard to:

• Critical evaluation of testing devices which provide results appropriate to clinical requirements (i.e. is the chosen device fit for purpose ?)
• Pre-analytical considerations
o Instructions for patient preparation and sample collection
o Patient safety and risk management
o Operator handling & training required
• Analytical considerations
o Frequency and type of quality control (QC)
o External quality assessment (EQA) procedures
o Device maintenance requirements
• Post-analytical o Instructions for the recording / reporting of results
• Other general considerations for testing

Some background notes about this assignment:

For the successful completion of this exercise, you will need to think about all the aspects of testing for these analytes. This will include all of the quality specifications as well as the practical considerations such as user friendliness, cost, shelf-life of reagents, portability and so forth. (Note: This is what you would need to do in a work environment if you were asked to select a new instrument – be it lab or POCT). To do this you would first collate the data and include it in a spreadsheet for comparison. Then once your comparison and decision is made, you would write a brief report for your manager. This summary is only one page in length – this is because your manager is busy and just wants your conclusions with brief justifications.