Dynex Makes European Debut of Agility Diagnostic System

Driving down the cost of healthcare. Next to developing safe and effective medical technology, today’s device makers also are challenged to keep prices low—particularly in the field of diagnostics, where reimbursement can be challenging.

Dynex Technologies Inc., a Chantilly, Va.-based manufacturer of diagnostic devices, debuted its Agility ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) micro-plate sample processing system to the European market at Medica 2011, held in Dusseldorf, Germany, from Nov. 16-19, 2011.

According to company officials at this year’s multinational medtech event, the Agility was designed to provide “automation and ease-of-use” to what traditionally has been a tedious and time-consuming process.

Designers at Dynex removed the manual set-up and data entry from the workflow, to reduce the hands-on time compared with traditional systems. The goal, they said, was to lower the cost of ownership as well as the cost per test. The company worked with assay manufacturers to develop pre-loaded reagent packs—Dynex calls them SmartKits—that the user drops into the system without a manual reagent transfer. A barcode system electronically communicates all the information needed for a successful assay. This feature eliminates manual data entry of kit-specific data, minimizes errors, and tracks all kit, sample, and consumable inventory.

“The Agility system and SmartKit reagent packs will revolutionize ELISA micro-plate processing, offering a great leap forward in improved efficiency and reduced cost,” according to Adrian Bunce, president of Dynex. “Never before has one instrument combined the speed, volume, and workflow performance typical of closed ELISA systems with the flexibility of an open system. You can run more tests in less time with fewer tedious steps and costly errors.”

Agility has three robotic arms for sample pipetting, reagent pipetting, and transferring plates, consumables, and SmartKit reagent packs. Up to 16 SmartKit packs can be stored on one Agility instrument at a time and up to 12 micro-plates can be loaded onboard as they are prepared, according to the company.

The system will be offered in a limited release to reagent manufacturers in the near future, with full availability to end users by the second quarter of 2012, company executives said.

Click here to see a video provided by the company: www.dynex-agility.com/video-dynex-agility.php