Tag Archives: microbiology automation

“Are you doing what you should be doing?”

Confessions of a Microbiologist, ,

If you are a microbiology scientist and spend a good chunk of your day setting up samples and aliquoting urines, you should be worried. I am sure you didn’t go and spend 4 years in university in order to do this.

If you are a clinical microbiologist and spend a good chunk of your day signing out/authorising routine urine and wound swab results, you should be worried. You didn’t achieve multiple degrees and other qualifications to do this day in day out…

If you are a microbiology technician, and spending a good chunk of your day unpacking boxes and carrying stuff around the lab, you should be worried. Someone off the street could easily come and do this…

And if you are a microbiology lab manager and find yourself spending a good chunk of your day on the bench, you should be worried. Old habits die hard, and who then is managing the lab?

Of course we all need to do things occasionally that we are over-qualified for, or that is not specifically in our job description. But when such tasks are taking up a large proportion of our jobs, we need to take a close look at ourselves, and what we are actually doing from day to day.

We need to make absolutely sure that we are performing tasks that justifies both our position and our qualifications. If we are not, then we need to do something about it.

If you spend most of your day doing something that is likely to be automated a few years down the track you should be concerned. But if you are doing lots of  things daily that could be getting carried out by someone else less qualified, you should be even more worried.

It is easy to get very comfortable when you fall into one of the categories above “This is easy money, I can do this with my eyes closed, there is no need to change anything.” It’s a dangerous mindset to get into however, because in my experience, such scenarios as described above are never left hanging indefinitely in the long term…

Diagnostic medical laboratories are businesses nowadays, and employers are always on the lookout for ways they can get the same job done for less money.

And they are very good at it…

Michael

 

“Reinventing yourself”

Future of Microbiology, The Science of Microbiology,

In the next generation (20-25 years), the diagnostic microbiology laboratory workforce will be decimated worldwide.

If you are a student, they don’t tell you that at the careers fair…

“You sound like exactly the sort of person we are looking for. Come and “train” for four years in a lecture theatre, and then work in a clinical microbiology laboratory, that is if you are lucky enough to get a job. Unless your Mum and Dad are well off, you will accrue a hefty debt which will likely take you a couple of decades to pay off. However in 20 years time your job will probably not even exist…”

Am I being too harsh?

In terms of general culture based bacteriology, most of it will have gone molecular. Whatever is left of it will be automated, not just partially automated as with the current Kiestra TLA system, but completely automated to include plate interpretation, colony picking, identification, antibiotic susceptibility testing and rule based signout. The whole works…

Most microbiology samples will never touch a laboratory worker’s hands.

Molecular testing will have increased, but on highly automated platforms, processing high volumes of work, with minimum manual input.

Our work will be reduced to oddities and troubleshooting. I would even chance to say that there will be just as many engineers as microbiologists on the laboratory floor.

And then I look at the core components of my own job as a clinical microbiologist…

  • Authorising important results:- This will be done automatically using sophisticated rules based computer algorithms. And they will do it much better than I can.
  • Giving antibiotic advice:- Decision support apps downloaded on clinicians’ smartphones will do this more sensibly than me.
  • Laboratory Management:- I fear there will be nobody left in the lab to manage…
  • Demand management:- Although the process of demand management will be performed by software algorithms, there might still be a little work left for me regarding the initiation and governance of such projects.
  • Anti-microbial stewardship:- Anti-microbial resistance is not going away anytime soon so there may be a continuing role in the governance of such programmes. But the nuts and bolts will be highly automated and app-based.

So I am not overly optimistic about my own long term future. No one is immune…

It is no accident that during conferences I heavily focus  on presentations in molecular diagnostics and demand management. That should help in the short term at least in securing my usefulness. However it is entirely possible I will need to retrain in something completely different before I am done.

I know my job description as a clinical microbiologist will change out of all recognition before I retire. It is not impossible that clinical microbiology as a career entity will cease to exist altogether.

We need to be constantly looking at what we do today, then imagining what we will potentially be doing tomorrow, and preparing for it as best we can…

Michael

“Leading from the Middle”

Confessions of a Microbiologist, , , ,

LeadingChangeFromTheMiddle_XAPM220

It is now over 6 months since we installed the Kiestra TLA platform into our laboratory. The initial teething problems have been surmounted, and the sytem is now running beautifully (touch wood!).

The engineering and lean processing support from BD has been outstanding. Our initial fears about installing such a system in the relative isolation of provincial New Zealand have very much been allayed.

We can now start to dream about the future potential that such a system offers us.

But aside from all that, what has impressed me most is how well the scientific and technical staff have embraced the new system.

Not only are they comfortable with the operation and troubleshooting of the Kiestra TLA system, but they are more than willing to come up with suggestions as to how to improve it further…

Staff members of all grades and ages have not been shy at volunteering their ideas and opinions, much more freely than I have ever witnessed before. This is just fantastic. Bring it on. We have a short meeting at 8.30am every morning and this works very well as a platform for starting discussions and building team spirit.

The “Kiwiestras” (as we call our department Pub Quiz team!), are now a confident and self-assured bunch of people. They know they are working in a progressive and high quality microbiology laboratory, a lab which aspires to be one of the best in the world…

And the team are responding to the challenge…

Michael

p.s. No more microbiology posts from me until mid-October as I am off on a road trip across the US. I will however post occasional updates from the trip onto “The Wandering Microbiologist” page of this website.