Expert Insights: Expanding the applications of the IR Biotyper in the hospital

Efficient microorganism strain typing is vital in healthcare settings, for infection control, epidemiological studies, and to better understand the causes of infection. Traditional strain typing technologies like pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, multi-locus sequence typing, latex agglutination and whole-genome sequencing are time-consuming and resource-intensive, and not always readily available in every microbiological lab. In contrast, IR-based strain typing is easy to carry out and takes just three hours from harvesting to result, for 30 samples (a single sample can be analyzed in approx. 30 min). In this application note, Bruker presents expert insights on how the IR Biotyper^® has been utilized in a hospital setting. Researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, USA, have used their Bruker IR Biotyper to support to assist in epidemiological surveillance cases for a range of pathogens, and also to develop predictive trend analysis for emerging microorganisms such as Candida auris.