GC Labs Introduces The First Microbiology Total Laboratory Automation System In Korea

GC Labs Introduces the First Microbiology Total Laboratory Automation System in Korea, improving efficiency and accuracy for microbiology tests

GC Labs (CEO Eun-hee Lee), the leading clinical diagnostics company in Korea, announced on Oct. 12th that it has introduced WASPLab (bioMerieux, France), the first microbiology TLA or Total Laboratory Automation system in Korea.

When a sample arrives, a clinical microbiological lab receives the sample, and then usually inoculates the sample into a medium and cultures it overnight. After culturing, a tester checks whether the sample is positive. If positive, it moves on to identification and antimicrobial susceptibility tests, and afterwards the results are reported. To date, all of these test steps have been conducted manually, and the type of inoculated medium and the culture time vary depending on the type of sample.

WASPLab, recently first introduced in Korea by GC Labs, is an automated test system that automatically processes the series of steps from sample receipt to inoculation, culture, and interpretation, which had all been conducted manually. In particular, it automatically interprets the culture as positive or negative and allows test staff to easily double-check images on the monitor before reporting the final results to clinical professionals.

Ye-jin Oh, Medical doctor of Laboratory medicine department at GC Labs, said, “WASPLab greatly improves test speed and efficiency, allowing us to report results in just two days for negative urine culture tests and three days for positive urine culture tests, including identification and antimicrobial susceptibility tests, which traditionally took at least four days. It also improves the reproducibility and accuracy of testing and minimizes lost or mistaken samples.”

GC Labs said it will officially begin to use the system in March next year after a 6-month period of evaluation. The company expects to further improve competitiveness in terms of test efficiency and quality with the introduction of the first microbiology total laboratory automation system in Korea.