Tag Archives: automated platforms

“Kiestra TLA and the impending Artificial Intelligence revolution”

Future of Microbiology, The Science of Microbiology, , , ,

We are now into our 10th year of having Kiestra TLA at the laboratory where I work in New Zealand. I think it is fair to say that once you have worked in a laboratory with bacterial culture automation (i.e. Kiestra TLA, WASPLab) in place, you would never go back! We certainly don’t intend to.

I am a firm believer in optimising the quality of results generated by the microbiology lab. From a quality perspective, the advantages of automated bacterial culture systems over traditional manual-based methodologies are very impressive.

Here are ten important benefits in terms of quality that result from having a Kiestra TLA in place:

  • Improved Standardization – Automates streaking, incubation, and imaging, reducing variability between technicians and ensuring consistent results.
  • Enhanced Sample Traceability – Uses barcoding and digital tracking to prevent sample mix-ups and ensure a complete audit trail.
  • Optimized Culture Conditions – Automated incubation ensures optimal temperature and humidity, leading to better microbial growth and more reliable colony morphology.
  • Higher Reproducibility – Robotics ensure that plating and streaking techniques are performed identically every time, minimizing human error.
  • Faster Turnaround Times – Automation accelerates the workflow by processing and incubating samples continuously, leading to earlier pathogen detection and reporting.
  • Advanced Digital Imaging – High-resolution imaging captures colony growth at multiple time points, allowing for early detection and remote review without disturbing culture plates.
  • Reduced Contamination Risk – Minimizes human handling of samples, lowering the risk of cross-contamination and false-positive results.
  • Integration with LIS (Laboratory Information System) – Enables seamless data transfer, reducing transcription errors and improving result accuracy.
  • Enhanced Quality Control – Automated processes ensure that each step is performed according to predefined parameters, improving compliance with laboratory standards (e.g., ISO, CLSI).
  • Improved Staff Efficiency and Safety – Reduces manual labor, decreases repetitive strain injuries, and allows microbiologists to focus on complex tasks like interpretation and antimicrobial susceptibility testing.

It is important to note that the list above is Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated. It would take me much, much longer to generate such a list myself! I have however reviewed it and agree with all the points mentioned.

And it is due to the impending AI revolution, that systems such as Kiestra TLA are really going to come into their own over the next 10 years.

The Kiestra TLA system generates thousands of images of cultured agar plates each day, which are ripe for machine learning approaches. AI assisted applications, such as for MRSA identification and identification of urine pathogens are already available on the BD Kiestra platform.

I have no idea what the researchers at BD Kiestra are currently up to (!), but one could envisage that there is a lot of development work going on to further extend these AI-assisted apps into pathogen identification for general wound swabs, sputum samples, etc.

I observe with interest what the Kiestra TLA will be capable of by 2035. One would think that a lot of the routine microbiology culture results will be generated with very little human intervention, leaving the laboratory scientists to focus on the more complex (and interesting) samples.

Undoubtedly, by 2035, we will have new Kiestra TLA hardware in place in our laboratory, but it is in the AI-assisted software where the real revolution is coming…

Michael

 

“Perfecting the Pick-up Line”

Future of Microbiology, The Science of Microbiology, ,

 220px-Pickolo_-_Automatic_colony_picker_add-on_for_Tecan_EVO_robot

In a recent post a month or two ago I noted that the current, so called “Total Laboratory Automation” systems still had a few gaps in them (Click here for the article), one of them being the ability to automatically pick colonies off a plate and inoculate MALDITOF plates and susceptibility broths.

It therefore came as somewhat of a surprise to me as I wandered around the Trade Exhibition at the ECCMID in Copenhagen. The sign “Automated Colony Picking” caught my eye..

And sure enough, there it was, a robotic system that could automatically pick a digitally marked colony, and inoculate a Maldi plate and a susceptibility broth. The company was called “Sci-Robotics”, and the hardware called “Pickolo”. It was being trialled at a laboratory in Italy, apparently with good success, even for small or mucoid colonies. 

The big corporates involved in bacteriology automation (you know who they are…) were showing a considerable degree of interest in the hardware!

Somehow I don’t think it will be very long before automated colony pickers are added to the big laboratory automation platforms.

In fact I don’t think it will be long (less than 10 years) before the manual work that the microbiology scientists will be performing will be restricted to the weird, the complex, and the bits and pieces which don’t easily automate.

….and that is exactly the way it should be.

Michael

Click here for a You-tube video on the automated colony picker as described above.

“The dogma of day 1 and day 2”

Confessions of a Microbiologist, Future of Microbiology, The Science of Microbiology,

Readers who work in a clinical microbiology lab will be familiar with day 1 and day 2 reading. That is the way it has always been. Regardless of when the specimen was put up, the plates are incubated overnight and then read on day 1, re-incubated and then read again the next day, on day 2. This old-fashioned system is so non-standardised, it is actually a wonder that we still get away with it with regards to accreditation.

However not to worry. Smart incubators are becoming increasingly prevalent (e.g. WASP, Kiestra).These systems know when each plate enters the incubator, and thus allows plates to be incubated for a specific pre-programmed time, before automatic imaging occurs, and the scientist is notified that they are ready to be read.

As these automated systems become increasingly common, we need to move away from the day 1, day 2 dogma. Most plates will only need incubated for somewhere between 12 and 18 hrs before bacterial growth is visible.

Instead we should be talking about 1st reading and 2nd reading, or something similar. We should simply stop referring to plate reads as day 1 and day 2…..

The other area that Day 1, day 2 dogma is seen is with regards to enrichment broths. Enrichment broths such as MRSA/Gp B broths tend to get incubated for a day before being subbed onto plates. Of course 1 day/24 hrs is a completely arbitrary figure. With smart incubators and 24 hr rosters we need to start validating shorter enrichment periods, in order to decrease turnaround times.

Continuous put-up, continuous reading, continuous reporting. That should be the vision of all clinical microbiology laboratories.

Michael