Central-lab testing, now in a box under one square metre: Roche's benchtop analyser wins European approval

A small hospital laboratory that cannot run a test in-house usually ships the sample away and waits. Roche's new cobas smart e immunoanalyser is built to end that wait: it has received the European CE Mark, fits in under one square metre of bench, and is planned to run a menu of over 100 high-value medical tests using the same reagents and technology as Roche's big central-laboratory platforms — so results match what the large labs produce. More than 90 per cent of its tests return results in 18 minutes or less. 'For smaller hospitals and laboratories, maintaining central-lab quality has traditionally meant outsourcing tests,' said Roche Diagnostics chief executive Matt Sause. 'This means patients get timely, accurate answers, no matter where they live.' The analyser completes a family that scales from small clinics to the highest-volume hospital laboratories.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation