FC inaugurates COBAS 6800 at GMC Jammu; Appliance to enhance testing capacity significantly

Jammu: Financial Commissioner, Health & Medical Education, Atal Dulloo, on Tuesday inaugurated COBAS 6800 machine at Government Medical College Jammu.

The appliance, installed at a cost of Rs. 3.72 crore, will significantly enhance the testing capacity by performing test on around 1200 additional samples in 24 hours.

FC said that this machine, a state of art machine requiring minimal human intervention, can perform real time PCR testing, the gold standard test to detect the presence of novel Corona virus. He expressed confidence that the hospital will optimally utilize this vital facility to facilitate the ailing at this crucial juncture. He asked for expert and efficient handling of this sophisticated machine so that the purpose of installing it is met.

Dr. Shashi Sudan Sharma, Principal GMC Jammu said that along with COVID-19 testing COBAS 6800 can also be utilized to detect other pathogens like Viral Hepatitis B and C, HIV, MTb, Papilloma, CMV, Chlamydia, Neisseria or other novel agents. “Tests for identifying diverse infections can also be run simultaneously,” she added. The COBAS 6800 is a completely mechanized, high-end machine for performing Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) tests in Real Time for COVID-19. The machine will give high-volume and quality testing and will assist in expanding the testing limit in Jammu division.

Pertinently, this fully automated testing system COBAS 6800 has been procured keeping in view the load and provide a better patient care, training sessions have also been conducted for the same. Besides, COBAS 6800 helps future focused labs adjust to the changing healthcare landscape, by ushering in a revolutionary new way of thinking about nucleic acid amplification testing, the Molecular Work Area. It will provide quality, high- volume testing as it can test around 1200 samples in 24 hours.

It is a sophisticated machine enabled with robotics that minimize the chance of contamination as well as the risk of infection to the health care workers. The completely robotized COBAS 6800 frameworks does not need arranging or clustering of tests, reagent readiness, or manual set-up of runs.