Tricorders Aren’t Real: Buyers Advice for Do-It-Yourself Test Kits or Instruments
Author: Douglas Marshall, Ph.D.
If you are a fan of the fictional Star Trek universe, you’ll easily remember the multifunctional usefulness of the hand-held Tricorder. In the series, characters used Tricorders as a hand-held device for sensor scanning, data analysis, and recording data. Today there are many companies touting simplistic versions of easy-to-use devices for food analysis; however, there are many caveats to the effectiveness of such devices. A third-party reference laboratory like Eurofins can be helpful when trying to differentiate a bloated marketing claim from true worthiness. This paper highlights some of benefits and pitfalls users can expect when using modern-day kits and instruments.
Testing food and ingredients is a proactive step you can take to analyze and verify the quality and safety of your products. There are many considerations you should know about using test kits and instruments in your manufacturing plant. Food producers, processors, retailers, and food-service operators may want to use do-it-yourself test kits or instruments to assess authenticity, quality, or safety of incoming raw materials and finished products. A quick check of facility cleanliness (absence of microbes or allergens) is another desirable result. Two primary benefits of such devices for users include ease of use and rapid results. The value of real-time or near-real-time results allows users to make quick decisions on whether the intended use of tested materials is okay. This is an especially important consideration when immediate decisions on whether to use products are a necessity.
From a laboratory view, our recommendations for buyers of do-it-yourself test kits/instruments for food analytes like toxins, heavy metals, sanitation, etc. is to make sure these are appropriately validated for the intended use. Some commercially available kits/instruments may not have the sensitivity and/or accuracy required to detect and quantify low levels of potentially harmful substances that may be found in foods. Also, kits/instruments may not have been validated for the products of interest. For example, a test for contaminants in water may not be a suitable test with a complex matrix like fish. Furthermore, if the intended purpose of using the kits/instruments is to generate data for regulatory compliance, make sure that the device has been approved for this use by the relevant regulatory authorities.
Before buying, some questions you should ask the kit/instrument manufacturers include:
- Has the kit been validated for products and analytes of interest?
- Are you really measuring the analyte of interest or some other proxy?
- Is there instrument drift?
- What is the precision and accuracy of the kit? How were precision and accuracy established?
- Can the instrument be easily calibrated?
- How do I determine staff competency and kit applicability for the task at hand?
- Do the kits have regulatory approval?
- Do the kits have broad industry acceptance?
- What is the shelf-life of the kit and required storage condition?
With satisfactory responses to these questions, you should decide whether it makes sense to do analytical chemistry in a food service or food processing environment. Some additional questions to think about include:
- Do you have trained analysts who can perform the tests?
- Do you feel comfortable interpreting the results?
- Do you participate in proficiency tests to ensure you are able to achieve accurate results?
- Do you have a quality management system in place to archive data?
- Are you running positive and negative controls?
- Is it a good idea to have positive controls of high-risk substances (toxins, heavy metals, pathogens) in your work environment?
- Do you have storage facilities that meet the requirements for storage of perishable kits?
- Do you have the tools and expertise needed to properly prepare a sample before analysis?
- Does speed and ease of use trump precision and accuracy?
To help evaluate the performance of kits or instruments you may find it useful to validate their usefulness in your applications and to do periodic checks with professional laboratories such as Eurofins. For example, if kits/instruments are not validated for the matrix of interest you should send samples to the lab for verification. When doing so make sure the lab is not using the same kits/instruments that you are using. Should your results not be sufficiently accurate, it may make sense to consider outsourcing testing to reputable laboratories. Validating your results also benefits you when auditors ask for evidence that what you are doing actually works.
At the end of the day, perhaps do-it-yourself devices can provide useful on-the-fly data; however, it is prudent to spend the additional resources required to ensure that such data are accurate, reliable, and sufficiently contribute to the minimization of risk to your brand reputation. Mr. Spock would never counsel Captain Kirk to use questionable technology to solve a problem.
