“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.” Morpheus to Neo in “The Matrix”

Hundreds of attendees from across the globe donned “Neo” sunglasses and black trench coats and made the life altering choice between the red or blue pill before lining up in front of the green screen at COPAN’s wildly popular booth at the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Microbe 2017 conference.

The New Orleans-based event was the perfect backdrop to launch WASPLab’s new sophisticated algorithms, appropriately called PhenoMATRIX™, with a booth themed after the 1999 cult-classic “The Matrix”. After striking a pose, photos were slipped into a PhenoMATRIX™ mousepad and guests walked away with an ASM 2017 souvenir, and a reminder that with PhenoMATRIX™ they will never have to touch a negative plate again. At final count, at least 500 pairs of sunglasses and mousepads were given away during the three-day conference, so we know customers appreciated the innovative and interactive concept! Visits to the booth broke all records!

Neon LED green lights dripped from the overhead installation, symbolizing the computer code that runs through the PhenoMATRIX™.

The newest feature in COPAN’s line of automation, PhenoMATRIX™ is a sophisticated suite of algorithms that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automatically recognize organisms, giving Microbiology labs the ability to read, interpret and segregate bacterial cultures with the click of a button. The revolutionary system is backed by a mathematical model for the prediction of colonies in the dataset.

For those concerned that the machines are taking over and we have truly entered “The Matrix”, don’t worry, human interpretation and Microbiology proficiency are essential for WASPLab^®. At the end of the automated process, the results are presented to the Medical Technologist for final interpretation and confirmation. This true automation is only available for WASPLab^® users!

Larger than life displays of ESwab™, FecalSwab^® and SnotBuster were quite the conversation starters. Two separate stations featured these unique products that combine COPAN’s patented flocked swab technology with high performance transport media to create Liquid Based Microbiology.

Customers were excited to see one of our newest products: Rectal FecalSwab^®. When it comes to little ones, obtaining and detecting gastrointestinal pathogens is quite challenging. Traditional methods for fecal sample collection aren’t the best option for the younger population since children often have a difficult time providing a timely specimen. That’s why COPAN developed the Rectal FecalSwab^®.

This new product consists of an easily transported plastic tube filled with 2mL of Cary-Blair. But instead of the regular flocked swab, it contains an anatomically designed rectal flocked swab with an intuitive stopper. The stopper is placed just below the flocked head to reach the transition zone of the rectum for sampling the rectal mucosa and epithelium for optimal sample collection and patient safety, specifically in young children.

Giving and Learning

Here at COPAN, we’re constantly searching for better solutions, and working hard to perfect our existing products. Through it all, one theme continues to drive this company: innovating together to improve patient care.

That’s why education is so important to us. We were excited that our unique algorithms were discussed during Saturday’s Session 276 -Microbiology Total Laboratory Automation Revisited: Lessons Learned and Future Directions.

In addition, COPAN was honored during the meeting for contributing a grant to the Clinical Microbiology Mentoring Program.

Different scientific studies were presented during ASM Microbe showcasing COPAN’s innovative products including: “Optimization of Clinical Microbiology Laboratory Workflow Utilizing the COPAN WASPLab^® for Urine Cultures and MRSA Cultures,” “Use of Digital Image Analysis to Interpret Urine Cultures on Blood and MacConkey Agar,” and “Evaluation of Copan ESwab Transport System for Viability of Clinically Significant Fungi by Using CLSI M40-A2 Document Parameters”.

“The Matrix” will always exist for those who choose the status-quo. But for the rest of us, those who want to see how far the rabbit hole goes and exactly what lies at the bottom, there’s COPAN.