Meet The Microbiologist - The Scientists Behind The Microbiology

How are new diseases detected in a clinical microbiology lab? Melissa Miller talks about the time it takes to develop a test for a new disease (hint: it’s getting shorter). She also shares her definition of ‘point-of-care’ diagnostics and explains the major trends for clinical microbiology labs. Host: Julie Wolf  Subscribe (free) on iPhone, Android, RSS, or by email. You can also listen on your mobile device with the ASM Podcast app. Julie's biggest takeaways: Antibiograms are vital to understand the resistance characteristics of locally circulating disease strains. These help make empirical decisions for antibiotic therapy regimens before the susceptibility test results are available. New diseases require new diagnostic tests. How to determine how well new tests work once they’re developed? Clinical microbiologists look to the sensitivity (how well does a test detect if a patient has a disease) and specificity (how often is the test negative if the patients doesn’t have it) of the test. Having access t