Additional Hamilton BiOS Videos
Hamilton BiOS, Askion C-line and Microlab STAR featured in Inselspital Bern Biobank Video
© 2016 Insel Gruppe AG. Produktion: Digitale Massarbeit. Republished with permission.
Translation of the video:
(00:07) A blood sample is being stored at the Biobank of the Inselspital ("island hospital") Bern, at -150°C.
(00:15) Only one hour has passed by since the blood has been drawn, but in this time, it has gone through a whole process, which worldwide is a unique process involving efficiency and degree of automation.
(00:38) But one after the other: First, before taking the blood, the wristband of the patient is scanned. With this, the uninterrupted documentation of the sample starts.
(01:03) The sample is picked up by a courier service shortly after drawing the blood. The courier had been triggered automatically with the scan of the patient's wristband.
(01:12) The courier brings the blood sample to the Center for Laboratory Medicine of the Inselspital.
(01:21) There, the sample is centrifuged on a high-tech lab street. This does not only process samples from the biobank, but also thousands of samples which are produced through the daily operation of the Inselspital.
(01:34) The samples for the Biobank are automatically recognized, processed and transferred.
(01:50) Now the sample is split. The pipetting robot which performs this was specially developed and produced on requirements of the Biobank of the Inselspital. It distributes serum, plasma and buffy coat into tubes, which are compatible with storage down to -196°C.
(02:19) The next step: The samples are frozen down to -140°C. This happens in accordance with a predefined temperature profile. By doing it this way, the composition of large ice crystals is avoided, which ensures the highest possible quality of samples.
(02:40) From now on, the cold chain will never be interrupted until storage. In an insulated, liquid nitrogen-filled dewar, the samples are transferred to the Biobank and put into storage there. For this purpose, two systems are available. In these tanks with liquid nitrogen, tubes are maintained at -150°C or below. On this basis, samples will fulfill highest requirements even after many years. The storage system is fully automated. The tanks have a combined capacity of 100'000 samples.
(03:16) As a second alternative, samples can be stored at -80°C in another fully automated cold storage system, which can store and administrate up to 2 million samples. The system offers triple security, does now allow ice buildup on the samples, and completely documents the samples. Only one hour after blood has been taken from the patient, the samples are stored in a way that they will be available with the highest quality to researchers for decades.