i-STAT TriControls Quality Control Solutions

Laboratory accuracy depends on the controls behind it. i-STAT TriControls are calibration verification and quality control materials formulated for use with i-STAT handheld blood analyzers, giving labs, hospitals, and point-of-care testing sites a single control solution that spans multiple analyte panels rather than requiring separate materials for each.

The appeal of TriControls comes down to consolidation. Because these aqueous-based controls are designed to work across chemistry, blood gas, electrolyte, hematocrit, and coagulation cartridges, a testing site can verify performance across a broad menu of assays without stocking and tracking several different control fluids. That simplifies inventory, reduces waste, and keeps documentation cleaner when it's time for a compliance review.

If you run i-STAT cartridges, the questions that usually come up here are practical ones: which control levels you need, how often to run them, and how storage affects results. TriControls are typically supplied in multiple levels so you can confirm instrument and cartridge performance across low, normal, and elevated ranges. Running the appropriate levels at the intervals set by your quality program?and after events like new cartridge lots or software updates?is what keeps your point-of-care results defensible. Pay attention to refrigerated storage requirements and room-temperature equilibration before use, since both directly affect whether your control values fall within expected ranges.

For CLIA-regulated environments, proper quality control isn't optional; it's the documented evidence that your patient results can be trusted. TriControls make that ongoing obligation more manageable across a diverse cartridge menu.

Sites using i-STAT for blood gas, chemistry, and metabolic panels often pair their control program with the cartridges themselves?see our iSTAT CG8+ collection for the companion testing supplies your quality control is designed to verify.