Do we have to purchase laboratory equipment or to get it for rent?

by admin Uncategorized
  1. Anybody who wants to start lab thinks to start it by purchasing all required equipment and assumes that it will help him in long run.
  2. However, nobody thinks about the cost of AMC/CMC of the equipment without which the vendor does not attend to your breakdown/issue calls.
  3. The equipment usually does not give any issue within first year and even if it does usually it will be covered by warranty. Any new establishments take at least a year to get samples for their equipment.
  4. Most of the people do not take AMC/CMC as the cost of it will be around 10% of the equipment cost itself (Ex: If you have purchased an equipment of 5 lakh then usually cost of CMS will be around 50000/- every year). However, with the improvement in business they usually come across breakdowns and if you have already catered for AMC/CMC it will help you, else you will have to bear the price of repair or replacement of a part which will be around 20-30% of the equipment cost.
  5. Most of the people close the lab with these additional expenditures or stop processing parameters in house by not using the purchased equipment.
  6. So, it’s always better to get equipment on rent though the running cost is more compared to purchased one as the maintenance of the equipment is done by the vendor free of cost. It’s always better to go for an agreement for commitment/reagent price/AMC or CMC cost for next 2-5 years whenever you purchase or rent an equipment.
  7. Smaller labs or new labs will not have any option to get equipment for rent, but it’s always better to start with smaller equipment with lesser cost till your sample load increases to go for rental model.
  8. Other reason to go for rental model is that for every 5 years the technology changes and you cannot buy equipment every 5 years. Once it is bought the resale value is very less/nil for many medical equipment. Also, you may not have the facility to run all the parameters on that, the stability of reagents and limitations of the equipment are appreciated only when we start using it and not before.