Urine screening for UTIs typically accounts for the largest proportion of a clinical microbiology lab’s workload and requires the attention of skilled and experienced microbiologists.
Valuable time spent on negative culture plates
Up to 70%1 of urine screening plates are typically negative or contain non-significant microbial growth.
However, these cultures still demand time spent analysing them by highly trained staff who are usually overworked.
The APAS Independence solution
APAS Independence Urine Analysis Module
The APAS Independence Urine Analysis Module brings intelligent, automated culture plate reading to labs.
Automatically removes negative culture plates
It provides the ability to automatically report negative and non-significant culture plates, removing them from the workflow.
Improves lab efficiency
This solution facilitates optimal resource utilisation by allowing highly skilled staff to ignore the majority of negative results and focus on more complex cases.
Key features of APAS Independence with Urine Analysis Module
Urine workflow optimisation
Automatically reports negative or non-significant cultures
Plates with significant growth are triaged for priority review
Intelligent plate sorting further streamlines downstream processes
Hands-off, rapid and high-throughput automation
240 plate loading capacity
Automatically reads 200 plates per hour
Intelligent segregation of workflow
Significant growth
Review (e.g. swarming or mixed cultures)
Non-significant growth
No-growth
Automated interpretation of results like a microbiologist
Assesses culture plate growth to accurately present and report colony enumeration
Differentiates and categorises microbial growth into distinct colony morphologies
Determines predominance in mixed cultures
Works with most commonly used culture media — including bi-plates
Clinical reports are displayed via the APAS Web User Interface
Reports are accessible from any networked workstation for review
Availability
The APAS Independence with Urine Analysis Module has regulatory clearances from the US FDA, has achieved CE Marking tothe new IVDR in Europe, is registered with the MHRA in the UK, and is listed on the ARTG in Australia.
Scientific library
The APAS Independence technology is proven in clinical trials and referenced in more than 25 publications in leading academic journals.
1Brenton, L., Waters, M.J., Stanford, T. and Giglio, S., 2020. Clinical evaluation of the APAS® Independence: Automated imaging and interpretation of urine cultures using artificial intelligence with composite reference standard discrepant resolution. Journal of Microbiological Methods, 177, p.106047.
