Automation in bacteriology: a changing way to perform clinical diagnosis in infectious diseases

Abstract

Automated systems were first developed for clinical chemistry, haematology and coagulation, and immunoassays, and these systems have shown success over the past decade. The concept of automating the bacteriology laboratory processes first became a topic of general interest during the end of the twentieth century [1]. Under increasing pressure to reduce costs while maintaining or improving quality, companies involved in clinical diagnostic microbiology looked to manufacturing models of production encompassing semiautomation and total laboratory automation. The delay to obtain automated systems for bacteriology may be explained by the greater diversity in clinical specimen size and sampling material, types of growth media, as well as the large variety of inoculation, identification and production processes [2]. Nevertheless, during the 20th ECCMID in 2010, different companies presented, in their showrooms, microbiology plating instruments, pointing out that the time for automation of microbial plating had arrived. In alphabetical order, the companies were Becton Dickinson/Dynacon with the Innova, bioMerieux with PREVI Isola, Copan Diagnostics with the Walk Away Specimen Processor, and Kiestra with the InoquIA Full Automatic [3]. Six years later, only two companies Becton Dickinson (BD)/Kiestra and Copan Diagnostics have implemented automated systems in clinical microbiological laboratories that combine microbial streaking, smart incubators with plate readers and conveyors. The first Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases special issue on microbiological automation was mainly written by companies in 2011 [4,5]. These companies predicted that automation in clinical bacteriology will improve time to results,