Dr. Bart Gordts

St. Jan Hospital
Bruges, Belgium

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Historically microbiology laboratories have had a very difficult time tracing and standardizing inoculation because of the manual nature of the process. Our lab must comply with certain ISO guidelines, in order to be eligible for accreditation. In order to do this we had to find a way to standardize and trace each step in the laboratory. The only way to do this was to automate the process. The WASP® is in line with the hospital's paperless system as it processes samples and labels them automatically allowing for full traceability and standardization with no possibility for error. WASP® allows us to show when and in which quality context each step has been performed. This has helped our lab immensely in meeting the traceability requirements for accreditation. Beyond the benefit of standardization, our lab has seen a significant labor and cost savings. We saw the WASP® pay for itself in less than one year! Automation is clearly the way to go in Microbiology!

Dr. Nancy Miller & Beverly Orr

Boston Medical Center
Boston, Massachusetts

In these financial times when every laboratory is looking to consolidate and deploy more optimally, it isn't about eliminating people but deploying people more optimally to create better lines of productivity, and make things more cost effective and improve the patient care as a result. Having a platform like WASP® paves the way for this kind of approach. We can take people whose expertise we need for the more difficult areas of the lab where a high level of judgment and interpretive skills is required and let the instrument robotics do the routine work.

There were several important features that set Copan's WASP® apart from other instruments; the first was the ability to read a barcode no matter where is was positioned on the container. This is a huge advantage. There is no sense in having automation that saves you time and resources automatically process specimens but you lose time because you have to manually print new bar code labels and apply them to every specimen upon receipt in the lab, just so they can be read by the instrument. For similar reasons, automatic uncapping and recapping of specimen containers was another huge factor when deciding on the WASP.

The next important feature of the WASP is the bi-directional interface with our LIS system. It is important for to know exactly when a specimen is received and processed in our lab. The WASP bi-directional enables us to accurately record when the specimen was "received into microbiology" and exactly when it was planted. Other instruments we evaluated could not do that.

The modularity of WASP® Software and Hardware is another important feature. This platform allows for the addition of new features and functionality like the Gram SlidePrep and other components easily, so one does not have to constantly change an entire instrument for a new instrument. I saw this as a huge advantage allowing expanded use of the instrument.

Gill Jones

Derriford Hospital 
Plymouth, UK

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Given the legal requirement in our laboratory to screen for MRSA all elective hospital admissions, we have seen a dramatic increase in workload. The WASP gives us an excellent LEAN alternative to workflow management in the delivery of an MRSA service, improving our department's overall efficiency. Our staff has found the WASP to be reliable, easy to use and the culture plates were of excellent quality allowing for clear readability. Additionally, we experienced an improved recovery of Staph aureus using the WASP®.

Dr. Giovanni Gesu

Niguarda Hospital
Milan, Italy

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Since we introduced WASP® in our lab, we've been able to free up staff time giving us the opportunity to train over half of our staff to work in the Molecular laboratory. Another portion of our staff has been trained in Cytology. Using the WASP® for the more tedious yet very important task of specimen processing comes as a huge benefit allowing us to train our staff in other areas of the lab. Our staff is able to not only focus on the more complicated tasks, on which they were trained, but also feel a further sense of fulfillment in their jobs as they are able to learn new skills as a result of the free time they've been given by WASP®.

Alice Friis Moller, MD

Hvidovre Hospital
University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Our laboratory recently experienced an increase in samples for testing. In order to deal with the increased workload and to deal with the rise in complaints from our technicians regarding hand and shoulder problems, we decided to implement WASP® and Liquid Based Microbiology. We couldn't be happier with the decision! We had previously used InocuLab for urines; these samples are now being run on our WASP®. We've recently held seamless training to transition our nursing staff to ESwab and Fecal Swab. In addition to urines, both swab and fecal samples are now being run on the WASP® with great success. We are especially happy with the Fecal Swab product, both with the ability to run this sample on the WASP®, as well as the ease of use of this product compared to the crude fecal containers which were previously received.

Alessandra Bielli S. Orsola-Malpighi

Hospital of Bologna
Bologna, Italy

WASP® increases the quantity of the work we are able to complete without changing the processes by which we work. Using WASP®, we are able to standardize our work, simplify handling and reduce our human resource needs without sacrificing quality Copan's tech support was very supportive in helping us to implement the WASP® and train our users.

Theo Liebregts

Laboratory for Pathology and
Medical Microbiology (PAMM)
Veldhoven, Netherlands

The decision to purchase a WASP® for our lab was based on low running costs resulting from limited disposables required to process samples, quick return on investment, high capacity, and the ability to work randomly between sample types. After purchasing the WASP®, we found that our system needed some custom programming in order to interface with our LIS and meet our specifications. COPAN worked closely with us to develop a custom software solution, which allowed for greater flexibility and efficiency in our lab.

Niek Arents

Laboratory for Pathology and
Medical Microbiology (PAMM)
Veldhoven, Netherlands

All of the technologists in our lab were easily trained on WASP® and are thrilled with its ease of use. We have seen fewer repetitive stress injuries now that the WASP® is performing almost all inoculation duties in our lab. Our lab currently uses ESwab for swab samples; we also run urines and other sample types on the system. WASP®'s ability to random access different types of samples is a huge benefit.

Dr. Patrice Laudat

Laboratoire Arnaud
Tours, France

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When I first learned about the WASP®, I was immediately impressed with the level of technology that the system incorporated. This was something completely new and innovative in comparison to the alternative systems available in the market. WASP® was installed at our lab in 2010. Initially the technicians were concerned about the potential to lose their positions due to a new automated process. They soon realized that WASP® was a positive improvement from which they could all benefit. We have already a plan to receive additional samples from newly acquired laboratories, so clearly no jobs are being lost. I believe that what we really gained by introducing WASP® is the streamlining of workflow. WASP® allows us to increase productivity, with a consistent throughput and that allows us to achieve high reproducibility of the results, as well as semi-quantitative analysis.

Kathy Roman

University Hospitals Case Medical Center
Cleveland, OH

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When the WASP® first arrived here at University Hospitals Case Medical Center, we were ecstatic! The WASP® allows us to automate the more tedious laboratory tasks and free our staff to handle more complex and interpretative testing. Our goal has always been to improve patient outcome. This is achieved by better handling patient samples, improving patient services in a timely fashion with quality and patient safety always in the forefront of our minds. The WASP® is accomplishing all of this!