Grifols Diagnostic Solutions announced Thursday its Procelix Panther System featuring Automation Ready Technology (ART) received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration.

The Procleix Panther system is approved for use with the company's Procleix Ultrio Elite, Procleix WNV, Procleix Zika Virus, and Procleix Babesia blood screening tests. ART technology offers hardware and software improvements to support blood-banking operations, including instrument networkability and information sharing, the company said. The technology also works to support complete sample automation and enables simplified user management by connecting multiple instruments to a track system for automated sample handling. Grifols' ART program is a long-term cross-platform R&D initiative to advance workflow optimization for laboratories. 

The instrument automates nucleic acid technology-based blood screening on one integrated platform and eliminates the necessity of batch processing. It also improves system usability, increases operator walk-away time, and allows laboratories to select efficient configurations for blood donor screening automation needs, Grifols said in a statement. The Procleix Panther System launched in countries accepting the CE mark last October.