The first placement of the APAS Independence in the UK

The laboratory is a clinically led provider of pathology and diagnostic services, with the purpose of delivering innovation and outstanding value to healthcare. Set up as a partnership between The Doctors Laboratory (a subsidiary of Sonic Healthcare, ASX: SHL), Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the laboratory combines academic excellence with industry leading workflow efficiency.

Screening urine and MRSA cultures is a routine task in the microbiology laboratory. The Halo is a large volume laboratory, receiving up to 3,000 MRSA and urine specimens per day. Additionally, the majority of plates show no significant bacterial growth (99% of MRSA samples1 , 60% of urine specimens), which results in valuable staff time being spent reporting non-significant growth samples of very little value. Implementing an automated plate reader, such as APAS Independence, to screen and report non-significant culture plates could improve laboratory processes and reduce time spent on manual plate reading.