The antimicrobial susceptibility test by diffusion method was developed in the 1950s. Since then, little has changed with expectation to the development of semi-automated antimicrobial susceptibility test readers which are not at all user friendly. Other “fully automated” methods with a different technology has gained little popularity as manual pretreatment of the sample is required, and limited number of antibiotics can be tested with locked-out reagent cassettes, not to mention a high running cost. As the result, diffusion method by antimicrobial susceptibility discs is still the preferred method in majority of the medical microbiology laboratories worldwide.
We are in development of a new generation fully automated instrument and consumables. The first device to be launched in 2017 is the “ADD” which has been well received in the preview in Medica 2016, Dusseldorf.