Automated urinalysis

Many sources of variation affect urinalysis testing. These are due to physiologic changes in the patient, therapeutic interventions, and collection, transportation, and storage of urine specimens. There are problems inherent to the manual performance of this high-volume test. Procedures are poorly standardized across the United States, and even within the same laboratory there can be significant technologist-to-technologist variability. The methods used can perturb the specimen so that recovery of analytes is less than 100 per cent in the aliquot examined. The absence of significant automation of the entire test, with the one exception of the Yellow IRIS, is unusual in the clinical laboratory setting, where most other hematology and chemistry testing has been fully automated. Our evaluation of the Yellow IRIS found that this system is an excellent way to improve the quality of the results and thereby physician acceptance. There is a positive impact for those centers using this instrument, both for the laboratory and for the hospital.