While attending the 112th American Society for Microbiology General Meeting, COPAN is announcing a strategic partnership with INPECO for the connection of its track system FlexLab 3.6 for continuous feeding of standardized tube specimens to COPAN's WASP®: Walk-Away Specimen Processor.

With over 500 systems placed worldwide, INPECO's track has been successfully implemented in the main specialties of the clinical laboratory everywhere. INPECO's vision of total lab automation fits perfectly with COPAN's vision for WASPLab™, and with this partnership INPECO is looking forward to expanding its track system to the Microbiology lab to achieve full lab automation. Lab automation reduces human manipulation wherever possible to manage workload, avoid safety issues, as well as the risk of mistakes, assuring a full traceability of the biological sample. With this in mind, the ideal solution for the laboratory is to load all the tube specimens in specimen reception or accessioning area, and then use the specimen's barcode to determine which instrument the tubes are carried. In the case of WASP®, the INPECO track will automatically manage tube specimens, from loading to storing and disposing. Specimens can be loaded onto the track system in two ways: specimens loaded in a hopper and automatically placed into buckets or specimens manually placed into the bucket holders prior to sending them to WASP®.

"Standardization of microbiology specimens to tubes and automatic loading of such tube specimens via a conveyor track system sent from the point of reception limits the number of visits to the WASP® to just loading and unloading plates. When used with WASPLab™, the only visit to the WASP® is to load fresh culture plates," says Norman Sharples, COPAN Diagnostics' Executive VP. "The addition of a track is particularly appealing to large laboratories, as it allows them to greatly improve efficiencies by streamlining specimen handling with less human manipulations and interventions" says Sharples. "The unique open platform of WASP® allows this type of modularity, highlighting again that WASP® is forward compatible and can converge with other technologies easily" concludes Sharples.