• Question: how many tests have you done in your job

    Asked by anon-178365 to Samuel, Jordan on 13 Jun 2018.
    • Photo: Jordan Moir

      Jordan Moir answered on 13 Jun 2018:

      Great question we have to test every blood donation for many different things such as blood group, for any diseases which could cause issue to the patients being transfused the donation such as Hepatitis B, C, E, Cytomegalovirus (CMV), HIV, Syphilis, Malaria the list is endless really. Each donation receives a standard number of tests and then depending on how the donor answers some of their screening questions other tests will be carried out. Malaria and West Nile Virus tests are only carried out if the person donating blood has lived or travelled to countries where these diseases are common.

      So we roughly get about 300,000 blood donations a year and each donation comes with at least 3 test tubes of blood sample as the analysers which test the blood require it in different forms and also so we can run multiple tests at one time to speed up the process. Therefore that is about 900,000 standard tests that are done a year but we also have the many other tests we carry out so probably closer to 12000,000 tests a year!

    • Photo: Samuel Vennin

      Samuel Vennin answered on 13 Jun 2018:

      This is what I do all the time all day long to develop new protocols so I don’t really know how many of them I have done since I started this job.
      I mainly do three type of tests though: one with computer data, one with experimental data from a “mechanistic ” model we have that replicates the arterial system, one with “real” clinical data we get from patients.
      I use the computer data to design my protocols, test them and change what needs to be changed so that they work properly. I then try them on the “mechanistic” model as it is supposed to represent the human heart and arteries in the conditions the protocols will be tested in. Finally, once I am happy with the results I obtained in these two types of test, I test my protocols in real patients. This final test is the most important one but cannot be performed before the two others have been carried out and successful. This is why developing new technologies takes a lot of times: you need to do a lot of testing to make sure that they work and are safe to the patient.

Comments