Lately, we’ve been thinking, how does our quality-control monitoring app, Reflections, fit into an historical context—and how could this thought experiment help us to improve our app? Some laboratories have smart equipment that streams data directly form an instrument to an interface; other use a combination of automated data streams and data entry by hand.
There are still laboratory technicians who scurry from one instrument to another, reading sensors, checking calibrations, and recording data with a pen, a clipboard, and a paper checklist, which will be three-hole-punched, snapped into binders, and put on a shelf…
So let’s put this in perspective:
The ballpoint pen was invented in 1888, when Jack the Ripper terrorized London; Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear; and international luminaries, T. S. Eliot, T. E. Lawrence, and Harpo Marx entered the world.
The clipboard was invented earlier, in 1870, when a certain Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov was born in Russia. A pioneer in artificial insemination, Ivanov would later try to create ape-human hybrids by impregnating chimpanzees with human sperm.
And the three-hole punch and three-ring binder were invented in 1886, the same year in which the president of the United States dedicated the Statue of Liberty in New York, Emily Dickinson died and Al Jolson was born, and munitions workers in London founded a football club called Arsenal.
The consequences of these developments have been long lasting.
Analog can be very cool, like artisanal whisky, but unless you’re digital, you can’t sign off on QC reports from your living room or at the poolside bar of a Hawaiian hotel. Performing any data-analysis would require transcription to Excel and further report building.
Created by IVFqc, Reflections is a secure cloud-based app that brings IVF and any laboratory instrument quality-control monitoring into the twenty-first century. Smartly designed easy to use, completely adaptable with Power-Customization®, scalable, affordable, and connectable. Any instrument with streaming functionality can be connected to Reflections—and to the Internet of Things.
No more paper checklists, no more clipboards, no more dusty binders.
With Reflections, you can create and manage you own specific instrument QC processes with any internet-connected device, anywhere in the world.
How do we move the ball forward from here?
We just added these new functions to Reflections: the abilities to run multiple log plans simultaneously and view log plans and dashboards from the days of their inception; to copy, modify, and save existing reports for updated uses; to show active instruments and parameters or hide inactive ones; as well as lot-tracking in beta.
Learn more about Reflections, sign up for a free 14-day trial, and see how the IVFqc suite of apps can bring your laboratory, clinic, or practice into, well, the present (!).
Daily log plan: check. Director sign-off: check. Glass of wine: check. Advanced QC-monitoring from IVFqc.
