Lancet Clinical Laboratories have vowed to continue replacing their laboratory equipment at five-year intervals to keep up with the latest technology.
The International Organisation of Standards (ISO) certified Clinical Laboratory is replacing equipment this year after using the last consignment procured five years ago.
Addressing journalists during a media tour at the Lancet Clinical Laboratories, the General Manager, Grace Ramhewa revealed that the machines will be acquired from Germany on rental terms.
“We usually don’t buy equipment but we do rentals. The reason being that if you buy equipment, it means you have to keep it forever. So there are no system or software, hardware upgrades. That can only happen when you are doing rentals. So that is done by the companies that we rent from. At the end of five years, all machines are obsolete. Then we get the engineers to do the updates,” said Ramhewa.
Lancet Chief Executive Officer Dr Charles Muronda chipped in saying, “technology is changing all the time. So imagine investing a million dollars on a piece of equipment that is going to be obsolete in five years. That’s not a good investment. The modern way is to get the supplier to put the equipment in your institution and as the technology changes, they replace the e equipment and give you the more updated equipment and the circle just goes on.”
Meanwhile, Lancet has already ordered some new equipment for their other branches countrywide.
“We have a consignment coming soon to be put at all our stations. We ordered the equipment sometime in November last year and it will be landing here soon,” said Ramhewa.
