For those labs that have more than one Luminex or Flow. Do you (and if yes, how often) coorelate results between the instruments?

We just purchased a second Luminex and might be getting a second Flow Cytometer. Of course we are validating the new instrument but, after the initial validation do you do any further routine checks to make sure they are both making the same calls? If yes, how often?

Thanks in advance.

At the OHSU immunogenetics lab, we have two Luminex machines.  One is dedicated for SSO and the other for antibody screening and Single antigen beads.
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We used to keep them both validated (yearly, i believe) for both SSO and Antibody screening and Single antigen beads.  However, we stopped doing that about 2 years ago when it became clear that it was best for us to have dedicated machines for DNA and serum. Also, the Luminex machines are so stable, we haven’t had an issue with one breaking down.  We intend to only validate them as needed if one goes down for an extended time.
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What do other labs do?

I’m not sure what other labs do. I did speak with someone a couple years ago whose lab is set up like yours (one for DNA and one for serum) but at that time I didn’t ask about what they did if one went down.

Since I asked this question we currently do have one instrument (the older one) down and waiting for service.

My quality assurance person wants correlation every 6 months and rotate PT between the instruments.

We have 3 luminex instruments and out of that we use 2 for antibody screening and one only for DNA SSO. We do parallel test for this instruments twice a year.

Thanks - that matches what my QA person wants… so that is what I will put into the procedure.

CLIA requirement is twice a year comparison of methods or instruments.