ABSTRACT
Clinical microbiology has undergone only the first of several phases in the establishment of automated instrumentation in the laboratory. This first phase began with a slow and skeptical acceptance of instrumented methods in the laboratory. Moreover clinical microbiologists were unexposed to rapid techniques and mechanistic approaches for the performance of microbiological analyses. The types of instruments widely accepted in the microbiology laboratory were those that required a microbiologist's interpretation of biochemical and antimicrobic susceptibility tests which were miniaturized versions of conventional assays. These instruments allowed the microbiologist to input reactions manually via an apparatus that would transmit an electronic signal, signifying the outcome of a reaction, to a computer. The development of an instrument for the purpose, including a microprocessor fast enough to capture data from a mass spectrometer and capable of analyzing the data is quite expensive. The real future of automation lies in new techniques that can address organism identifications and susceptibilities directly in patient specimens.
