Mass spectrometer

Tender description

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust wishes to purchase a Mass Spectrometer. Expansion of mass spectrometry across Laboratory Medicine (LM) at GOSH is essential to permit assay development, improve service quality and repatriation of sendaway tests. A particular focus of the new machine will be metabolic testing. Purchase of the mass spectrometer will enable us to significantly expand our repertoire and to make considerable progress towards providing a complete metabolic profiling service that would be available at weekends. Our research and development programme, with regards to new mass spectrometry methods, is carried out in partnership with the UCL Institute of Child Health (ICH). This extensive mass spectrometry facility is equipped with machines that are manufactured only by Waters Limited. This has resulted, for ICH, in methods effortlessly being moved between various pieces of equipment due to complete compatibility. To move forward, LM needs to mirror this approach. Thus, methods developed in ICH will be e-mailed across to a totally compatible machine at GOSH. This would dramatically minimise the lead time for LM to bring into service a new test. In the past we have attempted to transfer methods from ICH Waters machines to a different manufacturer's machine at LM. This was not successful, led to considerable delays as an essentially new method had to be redeveloped at GOSH. The facility at ICH already has a number of methods that they are keen to transfer across to GOSH. This can only happen if LM has a compatible mass spectrometer. Maintenance & Consumables will be included in the purchase of the mass spectrometer.