AC118

Development Of An Application Based On Access 2.0 for Windows, That Automatically Acquires and Manages Data from a Cytoron Absolute Flow Cytometer.

Bonanad S#, Pascual J.*, Sempere A.*, Gomis F.*, Machado J.*, López T.D.*, Ballesteros P.*, Garcia-Boyero R.**, Larrea L.*, Pelegrina A.***, Centre de Transfusió de la Comunitat Valenciana. *Hospital U. La Fe. Valencia. **Hospital General de Castellión. ***Ortho Diagnostics Systems, Inc. Spain.

Immunocount II^TM acquisition software is supplied with the CytoronAbsolute^tm Flow Cytometer (Ortho Diagnostics Systems, Inc.) for the analysis of samples. This software is capable not only to save the data in standard FCS 2.0 format, but simultaneously can store it in ASCII format, allowing subsequent reanalysis and/or exportation. However, no system is provided to directly create and/or maintain a database with the results generated. In our laboratory a big amount of the daily work is made on performing lymphocyte subsets studies (LSS), having to type manually all the results in an old OpenAccess II^TM database. This results in a loss of efficiency of the Unit, due to the fact that the process has to usually be made by technicians. In addition, the information volume generated by this routine is huge, and a skilled storage and handling of it is expected that would be very profitable. For all these reasons, we have developed a system capable of getting the information directly from the flow cytometer, in the aim of optimizing our resources, using Microsoft's Access 2.0 for Windows^TM. Our database can import the immunocount II^TM ASCII files, dumping the data to 8 temporary tables, that after being fused in a 9th one, enter in a ultimate database of LSS, that can be used as is, or can be exported in any desired format (dBASE III, dBASE IV, Excel, Paradox, Foxpro, etc) depending on specific requirements. We have named this database as "PLINFO" (according to Lymphocyte Populations), and implemented it with certain statistical functions and displaying and requesting options to accommodate the management of the data to our framework.