Evaluation of the blood gas analyzer GEM(r) PREMIER(tm) 3000

During the past few decades, new technologies have allowed the fabrication of miniaturized sensors and the development of analyzers well designed for point-of-care testing (POCT). They combined the ease-of-use and portability required for POC with the accuracy and the reliability of traditional systems. Instrumentation Laboratory introduced the GEM® Premier™3000, a compact and portable system to rapidly analyze pH, pCO2, pO2, Ca2+, Na2+, K+, lactate, glucose and hematocrit, from 135 μl of whole blood with a simple component: a cartridge, the GEM® Premier Pak. The analytical performance was compared with the Radiometer® ABL 725 instrument for blood gas/electrolytes/metabolites, and for hematocrit with the centrifuged microhematocrit method. Aqueous quality control materials (Instrumentation Laboratory) were used for precision and recovery studies. The evaluation was performed according to the Valtec protocol, designed by the French Society of Clinical Biology, for imprecision, linearity and accuracy. Within-run and between-run imprecisions for all the parameters gave good CV values. Linearity was good and results comparison showed close agreement with correlation coefficients between 0.91 and 0.99. The analyzer is very easy to use; the simplicity and the convenience of only one consumable make the GEM® Premier™ 3000 very suitable for a STAT laboratory or for POCT.