Roche has launched cobas 6500, a fully automated urine testing system that consists of two modular analyzers combining urine strip testing and digital urinary microscopy. The system tests for 23 parameters to help diagnose diseases such as urinary tract infection, kidney disease, and diabetes. The cobas 6500 offers the highest throughput on the market, ensures high-quality results and increases laboratory productivity significantly, while reducing manual steps and contamination risks for laboratory staff.
“At the moment, many manual steps are still required for urine analysis. With the cobas 6500 we can offer fully automated urine testing to laboratories, processing more than one thousand urine samples per day, which is significantly more than what can be done today,” said Roland Diggelmann, COO of Roche Diagnostics. “Building on our 50 years of experience in urine analysis, Roche Diagnostics is now entering digital microscopy for urine testing, bringing even higher-quality solutions to the laboratories. This enables laboratories to generate faster and more reliable results for the benefit of people’s health.”
The system will be available in in Europe, the Asia Pacific region, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Roche is also planning to submit an application for the approval of the cobas 6500 in the United States.
Urinalysis has been an important diagnostic tool for more than hundred years. Urine remains a key indicator of many diseases such as urinary tract infection, kidney disease and diabetes. Urinalysis can reveal serious damage that is asymptomatic in early stages yet treatable when identified in time. The urine test strip is a key diagnostic tool that yields quick and reliable information on pathological changes in the urine. Its diagnostic significance lies primarily in first-line diagnosis, screening during routine or preventive examinations, and treatment monitoring.
The cobas 6500 consists of two modular analysers: The urine test strip analysis module quickly tests for the risk of diseases such as kidney disease and urinary tract infection. The second module replaces the manual steps involved in urine microscopy and allows for fully automated quantification and classification of urine particles such as blood cells by digital microscopy. The unit significantly speeds up the microscopy process with as many as 116 test samples per hour, while eliminating variability of test results, driving standardisation. For flexible use, the two modules can be operated separately or together as a single platform.