Model fluids representing aqueous in-vitro diagnostic reagents for the development of dispensing systems

•Description of the rheological landscape of common in vitro diagnostic (IVD) reagents.•Introduction of seven model fluids to represent this property range.•Proposal of a fast and efficient procedure for IVD dispenser evaluation. Analyzers for in-vitro diagnostic (IVD) testing facilitate the determination of medical information from biological samples. To reach a high quality, the detection reagents have to be dispensed with a high degree of precision and accuracy. A technology change from conventional pipetting systems to contact-free dispensers provides the opportunity to reduce carry-over and handle reagents in the microliter range. A great challenge for the development and validation of new systems is the huge variety of the IVD reagents. This work presents the fluidic properties of 646 different aqueous IVD reagents and how they can be represented by a set of easy-to-prepare model fluids, covering the rheological range of the reagents. In addition, based on the model fluids, a standardized approach is presented for the evaluation of dispensers for IVD applications.