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The DNA Lab Troubleshooter generates reports that provide labs with the opportunities to pinpoint contamination events, weak profiles and instrument trends, all without having to spend hours or days reviewing log books to determine causes.
The information in the reports can help you spot trends in the processing success rate. For example, if you notice that the number of successful samples being processed starts to decrease, this decrease could indicate that something is wrong with an instrument, a reagent, or a process.
Over time, you can identify trends that would direct you to where any faulty elements exist. The information can point to any consumable lot number or instrument responsible for failed samples. That way, the cause of the problem can be investigated in a timely manner. The end result could be the reduced number of rework samples that are required for your lab.
A few mouse clicks!
First, you select a date range that reflects the date on which the plates were processed through analysis. This will display a list of plates for that date or within the date range you specified.
From the list, you then select the plates you want included in the report. You are now ready to prompt STaCS to generate the report. Click the Report button to launch the search ... it’s that easy!
The report includes details about each plate and each lab process. For example, for the selected plates, STaCS provides a summary of the lot numbers used for each step and the number of times they were used. As you scroll through the report, you can view the comparative information. The bold, red text indicates the common elements (either consumables or instruments) that exist between the plates you selected.
From this point, you can print the report or you can export the file as a Microsoft Excel (xls) file to a location on your hard drive or network. Furthermore, with the information provided in the report, you could pro-actively identify where to investigate in order to prevent further processing troubles.
Let’s explore a scenario. If you found issues with samples that were processed on various plates, you could compare those plates. You would notice that commonly used elements of those plates are highlighted. Those highlighted elements could be the indicator of a problem.
For example, if the lot of Polymer was highlighted for the selected plates, you would expand the comparison to any other plates in the system that failed. If it were confirmed that the lot of Polymer was used, then you would proceed with a QA exercise of that lot to confirm your findings. If it was determined that the lot was bad, you could retrieve a full list of plates where that specific lot of Polymer was used (via the Item Query module). After that, you would simply re-process the samples.
The Lab Troubleshooter is a very powerful and useful utility that leverages all the DNA processing data generated by STaCS on your behalf as you perform your day to day work.
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