VIRTUO is the first continuously monitoring blood culture microbial detection system to offer “set and forget” loading, allowing personnel with any skill level to load the instrument any time throughout the day and night, thus enabling even more rapid results and improved patient care. With VIRTUO, laboratories minimize hands-on time and maximize laboratory efficiency: when bottles are placed on the conveyor belt of the motion-activated loading bay, the conveyor belt feeds bottles via a carousel into a smart scanning station where the bottle barcodes are read and an image of the labels is captured. The system uses precision robotics to load all bottles into available cells for incubation and determination of a blood stream infection. Following a five-day protocol, negative bottles are automatically discarded into a waste bin.
VIRTUO™ offers a faster time to detection versus the current BacT/ALERT due to the inclusion of high fidelity optics and a new detection algorithm which has shown faster detection times on average four hours earlier compared to the BacT/ALERT 3D. This reduction in time to detection facilitates the ability to positively impact patient care.
In line with ever increasing accreditation standards, the new target VIRTUO system, along with new reagent labeling, enables features to automatically track lot numbers, check for expired bottles and measure the sample volume to help ensure compliance with the collection of the recommended blood volume of 10ml per bottle.
This next generation BacT/ALERT system utilizes proven blood culture reagent bottles for increased recovery of organisms associated with blood stream infections. Currently included in the BacT/ALERT media portfolio are the standard, charcoal based FAN and the new FAN Plus bottles, which use proprietary Adsorbent Polymeric Beads (APB).
