Awanui Labs has New Zealand’s largest network of diagnostic laboratories, with over 150 collection points and labs from Kerikeri to Invercargill. It has more than 2,100 staff and offers a comprehensive range of laboratory and pathology services. Since 2017, Awanui Labs has used Brother label printers to clearly identify blood specimens, ensuring accuracy and efficiency.
For Awanui Labs, labelling blood samples clearly is critical. The labs play a vital role in health services in the community, and that service depends on being able to correctly identify specimens at all times.
Awanui Labs collects, transports, tests and reports on many thousands of blood samples a day all over New Zealand, and it is crucial that every one of those samples is correctly labelled. Patient confidentiality and privacy also requires meticulous accuracy.
Labels include patient information, and barcodes that allow the labs receiving the blood samples to conduct the right tests and report findings correctly. Labels need to be in a very specific format, with clear identifying information that ensures accurate processing and reporting.
Label printers need to be efficient and reliable to keep up with patient demand. Lab testing often informs medical treatments, so it needs to be timely.
Awanui Labs staff use more than 460 label printers regularly, which is a significant investment in technology. Upgrades need to be carefully managed to minimise downtime, which includes having new label printers readily available and ensuring staff know how to use the latest models.
Awanui Labs first approached Brother through its ICT provider. It was upgrading its technology as part of an overall push to improve accuracy and efficiency across the business.
There was a long list of criteria that needed to be met, including meeting quality technology, output, reliability, good service, software integration, and cost requirements.
Label printing needed to be of the utmost quality to ensure clarity in every single label, and printers had to be durable and reliable to consistently perform well while being used all day, every day.
Label printers needed to meet Awanui Labs’ specific needs, which meant they needed to be customisable for security and accuracy purposes. Awanui Labs is accredited against ISO international competence for medical laboratories, meaning all its technology needs to surpass the highest standards.
Since being installed, Brother label printers have consistently performed to Awanui Labs’ high standards. They are in constant use all around the country, and some of the printers are still going strong as they approach their 2 millionth label being printed.
Brother label printers are used in clinics immediately after patients have their blood samples taken. Being able to print labels straight away ensures that the sample is immediately linked to the correct patient. Any additional labels can be printed on the spot.
Brother’s head office engineers in Japan specifically customised Awanui Labs’ label printers to provide a bespoke solution that ensures labels cannot be accidentally reprinted, adding a further layer of security to prevent users from mislabelling subsequent samples.
All servicing or troubleshooting is dealt with promptly through Brother’s 24/7 New Zealand-based helpdesk. Spare parts and replacement devices are always on hand, minimising downtime in the event that they’re needed.
"Brother labellers enable us to be accurate and precise, which is critical to our operation. Their speed of operation backed up with the service we get is excellent. We get everything we need, and we get it without any fuss. This extends to performing bulk updates remotely across our networked fleet. Simply put, it just works."
- Brent Glanville, Chief Information Officer