Keep a Record of Calibration and Maintenance of All Lab Equipment

The Instrument Calibration & Maintenance System (ICMS) from Autoscribe Informatics keeps a computerised record of all instruments within a laboratory and a history of calibration and maintenance events for audit purposes. This helps to ensure only properly calibrated and maintained instruments are available for use. ICMS is available as an option within the Matrix Gemini Laboratory Information Management System or as a standalone product.

The instrument details, calibration and maintenance information are recorded in ICMS in order to allow the instrument status to be tracked automatically. It can therefore provide immediate feedback on instrument availability at the time a particular analysis is scheduled, rather than checking the status when the results need to be entered. This prevents the allocation of work to an un-calibrated instrument or one that has not been maintained correctly. It also allows the identification of events such as the maintenance period being exceeded.

The system can provide reminders of pending calibration and maintenance tasks and allows assessment of instrument support agreement value. These in turn ensure the laboratory can demonstrate that it follows standard calibration and maintenance procedures and can indicate which instruments are most costly in terms of maintenance and reliability.

An automatic change of status occurs when calibration or maintenance is overdue and when it is performed. As well as flagging events that affect the availability of instruments, the system can produce a series of useful reports. These include: calibration and maintenance schedules; instruments due for calibration or maintenance over a user specified period; overdue calibrations and maintenance events as well as all unavailable instruments. It is also possible to develop additional reports using Crystal Reports or other reporting tools.