Hacker News Reader

Comment by deng | Hacker News Reader

Yes, these machines are insane. See also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6P-jaC3_d3o

The dramatic trailer music is quite adequate, IMHO.

That is a very well produced video, it doesn't contain a single spoken word and yet it tells the story perfectly. Incredible machinery. Any idea what these cost?

Looks like around 400k base [0], but a full system with service appears like it would run over a million in a year or two

[0] https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/V797P7347A/0UZLK9.3QPY... , page 13

This is actually surprisingly cheap. My guess is the real margin is in the tests itself, which you must buy from Roche as well.

That is amazingly cheap, I expected an order of magnitude more.

The video above (at least one of them) was showing an entire automation line built on Roche technology-- easily an order of magnitude more than 400k. The Cobas 8800 is just a component of that entire line.

Ah ok, that makes more sense. I figured a 100K or so per unit would be cheap the way it has been engineered. That's a whole robotic laboratory and what with the normal price of cleanroom equipment it would be ridiculously cheap if that setup was a few hundred K.

Yes, and if you install one on site, they send dedicated techs to set it up, which lasts a month or more, plus custom integration with site software. I worked with a similar machine and if it lost its net connection to the backend database, it would dump half a million $ in reagents down the drain when it entered "safe mode".

Impressive video and soundtrack, indeed. One thing that I don't fully understand, though, is how relevant lab results might be accurate, when, during part of the processing workflow, containers appear to be open to the processing chamber and its atmosphere, thereby presumably being exposed to potential cross-contamination. I'm likely missing something trivial, so I'm curious about what it might be.

I guess it might be flushed by cleaned air or nitrogen ?

But good point about cross contamination, still could be there is a mechanism to counter that, like some vapour pressure tricks or gas streams preventing fumes from one open container reaching another.

Thank you for your feedback. Perhaps, you're right. Let's see whether other people can shed some additional light on this.

I worked on the ancestor to these machines over at Abbott. There’s nothing in whole blood or serum that will spontaneously aerosolize and get into the air.

The tests are detecting levels of antigens, antibodies, or DNA in the sample. The samples are manipulated with disposable parts to prevent crossover.

Understood. Thank you very much for your clarifications.

Like something from Star Trek

Glorious. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com