P26.01
Background: In 2006 The Medical Research Council (MRC) HIV Prevention Research Unit (HPRU) set up a Repository for archiving specimens for various clinical trials which included Microbicide, PrEP and future Vaccine trials. The Repository currently houses 375865 samples. To ensure effective and efficient specimen management, the laboratory instituted the use of an electronic Laboratory Data Management System (LDMS). However, various challenges have been encountered during the specimen storage process. The following were identified amongst others as main errors: a) deviations of freezer temperatures as a result of manual monitoring of temperatures, which compromised specimen stability and b) samples being omitted in error for shipments.
Methods: In 2012, the introduction of a continuous temperature monitoring (CTM) system was necessitated which notified all relevant staff of temperature deviations at any given time to ensure specimen quality and integrity was not compromised within and external to business hours. In order to eliminate errors during shipment, a LDMS quality control (QC) tool was implemented by checking the shipping list against the shipping manifest as well as the physical sample to ensure that all specimens requested were shipped.
Results: The introduction of the CTM led to a 100% notification of temperature deviations over the last 2 years. No samples were compromised for any study endpoints. The LDMS QC tool has shown on average a 100% reduction in the QC error rate over the last 2 years.
Conclusions: A high quality of specimens was maintained since the implementation of the CTM system from May 2012 to date. The quality control process introduced for shipments eliminated duplication and reduced shipping costs. Lessons learned from the challenges above has deemed the repository to an award winning status and has since been the benchmark for other institutions.
