Rapidlab® 1200 Blood Gas Analyzer

Siemens/Bayer blood gas is a strong contender for several reasons not related to the quality of the 400 and 1200 product lines. The 400 series is limited in menu from the clinicians perspective and now the market bench mark of multi function platforms puts it in second or third place - no lactate, iCa, Creatinine/Urea, coag etc.The 1200 takes two unusual technologies - cartridge reagents and seperate electrodes and combines them in an inefficiant manner for the non lab user to manage.- However - the sales model of providing all services to the lab in one bundle and bypassing the clinician approval makes this attractive if you roll all services up together - immuno, chem, heamo and POC - service, support, reagents, urinalysis, glucose, HBa1c etc. Bayer were proposing this long before Siemens showed up at the door.The fastest growing POC provider looks to be Abbott Point of Care/i-STAT [whoever owns this now] It has clinician acceptance with the menu breadth of blood gas, chemistry, metaboltes, coag and cardiac. Its not perfect although it ticks most of the boxes required.As UK and European labs can longer staff support arrangements for blood gas benchtops in the clinical areas, i-STATs become a viable alternative.Roche appear to have given up on blood gas - Reflotrons and Cardiac Readers seem to be their focus and Radiometer is moving toward cardiac markers. Nova, Irma and Opti are all in minority niches by the look of it at present