{"id":4558,"date":"2017-10-06T12:45:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T12:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waters.com\/blog\/reducing-the-frequency-of-engineer-visits-for-lc-ms-maintenance-to-annual-events\/"},"modified":"2022-07-28T03:08:18","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T03:08:18","slug":"reducing-the-frequency-of-engineer-visits-for-lc-ms-maintenance-to-annual-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waters.com\/blog\/reducing-the-frequency-of-engineer-visits-for-lc-ms-maintenance-to-annual-events\/","title":{"rendered":"Reducing the Frequency of Service Engineer Visits for LC-MS Maintenance to Annual Events"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>For King\u2019s Liver Laboratories, infrequent instrument service is a reality thanks to their 13-year partnership with Waters<\/h2>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4110\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4110\" style=\"width: 225px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.waters.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/tqs1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4110 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.waters.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/tqs1-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4110\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The ACQUITY UPLC-Xevo TQ-S micro system at King\u2019s Liver Laboratories.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Labs like King\u2019s Liver Laboratories in London need to analyze thousands of samples with fast turnaround times, so it\u2019s critical to have reliable LC-MS\/MS instrumentation that works every day and provides accurate and precise results.<\/p>\n<p>To achieve this, it\u2019s helpful if the laboratory has a good long-term relationship with an instrument provider. King\u2019s Liver Laboratories benefits from such a relationship with Waters.<\/p>\n<p>As part of the <a href=\"https:\/\/kclpure.kcl.ac.uk\/portal\/en\/organisations\/institute-of-liver-sciences(43c60057-ca56-4a77-b76f-5bd1909403ad).html\">Institute of Liver Studies<\/a> at King\u2019s College Hospital, the facility processes about 23,000 diagnostic tests per year using a variety of analytical techniques, including tandem quadrupole mass spectrometers for Immunosuppressive Drug Monitoring (IDM) services. They have used three generations of Waters MS products and are currently using ACQUITY TQD, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.waters.com\/waters\/Xevo-TQD-Triple-Quadrupole-Mass-Spectrometry\/nav.htm?cid=134608730\">Xevo TQD,<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.waters.com\/waters\/Xevo-TQ-S-micro-Triple-Quadrupole-Mass-Spectrometry\/nav.htm?cid=134798856\">Xevo TQ-S micro<\/a> systems.<\/p>\n<p>The Xevo TQ-S micro has been particularly important to the lab thanks to its increased sensitivity, which allows access to lower analyte concentrations and alternative sample matrices.<\/p>\n<p>Describing how the reliability and robustness of Waters instruments meets their needs, Dr. Phillip Morgan, who leads the IDM service, said, \u201cIn practice, the instruments are used virtually all day during busy times, with injections of crudely prepared (protein-precipitated) whole blood. With one or two exceptions the only time they see an engineer is for the annual performance maintenance service.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Typical turnaround times for samples submitted for IDM are 24 hours \u2013 so it is easy to see why any downtime can significantly impact this laboratory\u2019s success.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201c&#8230; The only time they see an engineer is for the annual performance maintenance service.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<h3>The more the merrier<\/h3>\n<p>In fact, being able to ensure continuous results turnaround is so important that King\u2019s Liver Laboratories have invested in multiple instruments.<\/p>\n<p>As Dr. Morgan described, \u201cWe are lucky to have three instruments that can be used interchangeably so we can cope for a while if an instrument becomes unusable. If two go down then it causes serious issues, thankfully this situation has not arisen.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4113\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4113\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.waters.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/tqd1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-4113 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.waters.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/tqd1-300x265.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"265\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4113\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The ACQUITY UPLC-Xevo TQD system used for for immunosuppressive drug monitoring at King\u2019s Liver Laboratories.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>As explained in Fionn Quinlan\u2019s previous blog post on <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.waters.com\/the-importance-of-therapeutic-drug-monitoring-by-lcms-through-the-lens-of-organ-transplantation\">therapeutic drug monitoring<\/a>, LC-MS\/MS is a more specific test than immunoassay and so is less likely to result in over-reporting of drug concentrations in samples, particularly when metabolites, which are resolved by MS but not by immunoassay, may be present at similar levels to the parent drug.<\/p>\n<p>The increased usage of LC-MS\/MS in clinical laboratories worldwide means that this cutting edge technology will improve healthcare for many more people in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Labs like King\u2019s Liver Laboratories in London need to analyze thousands of samples with fast turnaround times, so it\u2019s critical to have reliable LC-MS\/MS instrumentation that works every day and provides accurate and precise results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":1239,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"Reducing the Frequency of Service Engineer Visits for LC-MS Maintenance to Annual Events","_seopress_titles_desc":"For King\u2019s Liver Laboratories, infrequent instrument service is a reality thanks to their 13-year partnership with Waters","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[185,24,252,285],"class_list":["post-4558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clinical","tag-clinical","tag-mass-spectrometry-ms","tag-tandem-quadrupole-mass-spectrometer","tag-therapeutic-drug-monitoring"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":13,"label":"Clinical"}],"post_tag":[{"value":185,"label":"clinical"},{"value":24,"label":"mass spectrometry (MS)"},{"value":252,"label":"tandem quadrupole mass spectrometer"},{"value":285,"label":"therapeutic drug monitoring"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/www.waters.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/tqd1-1024x906.jpg",1024,906,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Mark Roberts","author_link":"https:\/\/www.waters.com\/blog\/author\/mroberts\/"},"comment_info":"","category_info":[{"term_id":13,"name":"Clinical","slug":"clinical","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":13,"taxonomy":"category","description":"We advance human health and well-being by providing an extensive portfolio of in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) systems, reagent kits, and software used by thousands of hospitals and laboratories worldwide. Most notably, Waters delivers technologies for newborn screening, an area of clinical diagnostics that has made a healthy adult life possible for millions.","parent":0,"count":34,"filter":"raw","term_order":"0","cat_ID":13,"category_count":34,"category_description":"We advance human health and well-being by providing an extensive portfolio of in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) systems, reagent kits, and software used by thousands of hospitals and laboratories worldwide. 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