The Hamilton Regional Laboratory Medicine Program, one of the largest lab networks in Canada, serving more than 1.4 million residents across the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant Local Health Integration Network (HNHB LHIN), announced today the decision to purchase COPAN's WASPLab, the latest generation of full laboratory automation and digital microbiology system. Installation is scheduled for the last quarter of 2013 at Hamilton General Hospital.

"After a thorough due diligence process reviewing different commercially available options for full lab automation, we are pleased to announce our decision to purchase WASPLab. Our goal in moving to full lab automation is to ensure patients in our area have access to excellent, timely and effective care. With the decreased turnaround times, our clinicians are excited about the positive impact WASPLab will have in enhancing patient care, antibiotic stewardship and infection control management," said David Langstaff, Executive Director of the Laboratory Medicine Network.

With the purchase of WASPLab, microbiology testing from Joseph Brant Hospital and the Niagara Health System will be redirected to Hamilton as part of a Regional Microbiology Service. The move will maintain and improve the quality of patient care, reduce turnaround times and improve access to technology and state of the art testing for these two organizations. "The implementation of this state-of-the-art laboratory is something that wouldn't be possible for us to achieve as individual organizations," Langstaff said. "The strength of our regional program has enabled us to purchase and implement a system that furthers our goal of building a fully integrated, leading practice, best in quality, regional laboratory system," added Langstaff.

"Pressures to improve efficiencies in health care continue to drive more consolidation of laboratory services. Digital microbiology, through reports that consolidate a library of culture images, descriptions of the findings and the professional interpretation of the results by the lab, brings microbiology to the clinicians, reducing turnaround times tremendously," said Norman Sharples, CEO of COPAN Diagnostics, Inc. "WASPLab bridges the gap between laboratory knowledge and clinicians, improves speed and accessibility of results, shares images and interpretational reports to the office desktop or screen of any mobile device .this is the future of microbiology," concluded Sharples.