bioMerieux opens “Lab of the Future” near St. Louis

On October 30, bioMerieux opened its second “Lab of the Future” in its Research & Development and manufacturing center outside St. Louis, Missouri. This is the first Lab of the Future in North America and the second overall; the other is located at the company’s global headquarters in Marcy l’Etoile, France. The Lab of the Future is designed to serve as a hands-on operational blueprint for microbiology labs in the 21st Century, which, bioMerieux representatives assert, “is witnessing the convergence of challenges that collectively pose a serious risk to public health” as well as to clinical laboratories. These challenges, they say, include antibiotic resistance, an increasing incidence of sepsis (with associated costs), an aging laboratory workforce, and the closing of many hospital-based training programs for clinical laboratory professionals. bioMerieux believes that the Lab of the Future, by highlighting innovative smart lab automation, robotics, LEAN lab design, and information technology, presents a model for success as the laboratory profession faces those and other challenges. Highlighting the bioMerieux instrumentation used in “the microbiology pathway,” the Lab of the Future includes the company’s BacT/ALERT 3D, PREVI Color Gram, PREVI Isola, and VITEK MS products, as well as its MALDI-TOF platform. Learn more from a brief video produced by bioMerieux.