Infectious disease testing: The road to automation

The demand for infectious disease testing has been increasing. At the same time, the methods for testing have evolved from highly manual, tedious assa ys to semi-automated systems to the recently developed highly automated met hods, Pressures to perform high-volume testing for microbial agents have ha stened this progress. In this paper, we describe the development of infecti ous disease testing and delineate menus and features of the newer, highly a utomated systems available for performing this role. As menus of these auto mated systems increase, there will also be increases in the ability of labo ratories to consolidate workstations and enhance productivity.