Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Abbott Laboratories Pakistan for “Total Lab Automation” Equipment placement and Product supply at DUHS Ojha Campus. The MoU was inked by Prof. Masood Hameed Khan, Vice Chancellor-DUHS and Habib Ahmed, Country Manager, Abbott Laboratories Pakistan at the Governor House, Karachi in the presence of Governor Sindh Dr. Ishrat Ul Ebad Khan as the Chief Guest, University Syndicate Members, Professors and faculty of the University.
The principle approach of the establishment of Total Lab Automation is to improve quality, reducing turnaround times for laboratory test results, save money and to improve productivity.
Governor Sindh, Dr. Ishrat Ul Ebad in his address urged the pharmaceutical companies to help medical institutions undertake medical research activities of public utility. Most of the government universities find it difficult to devote significant amounts of money for any meaningful and people-oriented research, and as such there emerges the need for a public-private partnership. He further said that he had been an ardent advocate of applied research at higher education institutions, in addition to academic activities.
He further informed that it was a great moment as the private sector join hands with the public sector and this partnership would help create more public-private sector collaborations aimed at a correct diagnosis and extension of right cure to the poor of Karachi and other parts of the province. The provision of big medical and scientific facilities at the Ojha Complex of the DUHS had certainly boosted public confidence in the University`s faculty members and motivated them to be more professional and make the university hospital more qualitative and affordable for the citizens. He also announced the provision of 10 ventilator-fitted ambulances and 10 dialysis machines for the DUHS dialysis centre shortly.
He also appreciated the efforts of Vice Chancellor DUHS Prof. Masood Hameed Khan and his dedicate team for his dynamic leadership qualities in the establishment and the developments of the University in a very short span of time.
Prof. Dr. Masood Hameed Khan sharing his views on the occasion said that DUHS planned to acquire latest technology of Total Lab Automation to meet the international standard, minimize human error and increase the working capacity. Furthermore the basis of this partnership is to provide world class, high quality diagnostic results to the masses at the most affordable cost, by implementing state of the art Total Lab Automation solution which will enable them to get accurate results in the most effective and efficient way.
Initially the total capacity of Total Lab Automation to handle 1200 patients per day and would increase upto 7200 patients per day. The population of interior Sindh and Karachi would be benefited by this Automation facility.
Furthermore, he recounted the progress of the University since its inception and also highlighted its progress. He informed that the DUHS had three constituent institutions in 2003, which gained the status of varsity but now it had almost 40 such institutions.
Habib Ahmed, Country Manager, Abbott Laboratories Pakistan speaking on the occasion said that this Total Lab Automation system provides complete automation for all pre analytic, analytics and post analytic processing steps including centrifugation, decaping, aliquoting, test analysis, resealing, desealing, sample storage and archiving as well as the IT Automation to get patients requests from and transmit reports to the Hospital Laboratory Information System on real time basis.
He further said that this system has been designed both with the current workload and keeping in mind the future growth in volume. It offers sample processing capability of 600 patient tubes per hour with a throughput of up to 400 Immunoassay and up to 2400 Clinical chemistry test results per hour. This project will be for 7 years and it involves a total upfront investment of US$2.5MM on the part of Abbott Diagnostics in the form of hardware installation only.
Total Lab automation system will be the first in the Country for Abbott Diagnostics Pakistan, although this is a long established global solution which is US FDA approved with many live accounts across the globe including US, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific. We are strongly committed to make this partnership a really great success and a practical role model for others to replicate.
We admire the selfless mission of DUHS to serve the humanity and feel truly proud to join hands with its management to translate this vision into action for the benefit of the society at large.