Sahlgrenska University Hospital

Processing blood with Biohit eLINE electronic multichannel pipettor

”eLINE is the perfect pipette taking care both of the work and the person using it”

says Lisbeth Lemmetti, Development Analyst, Biomedicine
at the Blood Centre at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden

Lisbeth has been working at the Blood Centre of the Sahlgrenska University Hospital since 20 years. The Blood Centre provides the hospital with blood for, among others, surgery, transplantations and cancer treatment. Blood can be donated at the two hospital laboratories, at a specific site in the centre of Gothenburg and in a bus operated by the Centre.

The Blood Centre collects and processes more than 40.000 blood sacks every year. The blood is processed by separating its various components: red cells, platelets and plasma. The processing of blood includes a lot of repetitive work. Lisbeth was earlier doing 300-500 pipettings every day, and doing it manually caused her lots of problems, such as repetitive strain injuries and other upper limb disorders. Moreover, the work used to be very time-consuming.

Already in 1990 Biohit came up with an alternative: Proline, an electronic pipettor with multidispensing functions. Eventually Lisbeth switched to eLINE, the new electronic pipettor launched by Biohit in 2002. Special emphasis has been put on the ergonomics, ease-of-use and performance in the development and design of the single- and multichannel eLINE pipettors.

Since she started to use electronic pipettors, Lisbeth has been able to work a lot more efficiently. In addition, she no longer suffers from bad ergonomics. As Lisbeth puts it,”eLINE is the perfect pipette taking care of both the work and the person using it”.

Today robots have taken care of most of the work, but electrical pipettes are still being used for about 100 – 200 pipettings every day.

About Sahlgrenska University Hospital:

Sahlgrenska University Hospital (SU) provides emergency and basic care for the Gothenburg region, and its 700,000 inhabitants, and highly specialised care for West Sweden, with 1.7 million inhabitants. SU is also the country’s centre for certain specialised care, especially in paediatrics (paediatric heart surgery, incubator care for premature babies, as well as the treatment in paediatric endocrinology). SU is also well known for its successful transplant activity, treatment of cardio-vascular diseases, immunology (research into rejection mechanisms) as well as research into vaccines.

The Blood Central of the hospital employs 110 persons in one central unit, two annexes and one bus). The central was founded in 1948.