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Posted to uk.d-i-y
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(Totally OT) The NHS
On 12/04/2016 17:15, lid wrote:
In message , Andrew
writes
Buying best in class isn't the issue. There are no British
multi-channel analysers (AFAIK). Back in 1974 the chemical pathology
dept at Barts did have an oddball UK multichannel analyser. It looked
like someone had invented and built it in a shed (and probably did),
and it was hated by the technicians /MLSO's and didn't last long.
Vickers M300, developed by Clifford Riley at Brighton. Ahead of its time
-- it implemented a degree of positive sample ID on the analyser and
printed the results out on sticky labels that could go straight onto the
request/report forms. All controlled by a PDP8. Unfortunately, it wasn't
a discretionary analyser, running the battery of a dozen or so tests on
all samples.
Yes that sounds familiar, but the the Barts Chem Path lab also had a pdp
11/34 that produced the ward reports somehow, and the latter
cost £60,000 in 1972 !. It had 16K words of core, a 2.5 Mbyte fixed
head disk and a removable 2.5 Mbyte pack.
Unlike a Technicon SMA(C) which split the incoming sample into multiple
channels, I seem to remember the plasma or serum samples travelling
around a conveyor on the M300, a bit like a sushi bar, and each
chemistry station took a dip and did what was necessary, hence the need
for a pdp/8 to make it all work together. I seem to remember that
mixing and matching appropriate chemistry 'stations' was its selling
point, So in that respect it must have been more like a modern discrete
analyser, but being an ex-Haematology FIMLS/techician that's outside my
knowledge.
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