BD Leverages Artificial Intelligence To Transform Microbiology Urine Testing

BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (NYSE: BDX), a leading global medical technology company, today announced the U.S. launch of a Urine Culture Application for use with the BD Kiestra lab automation incubation and imaging system that can transform the way microbiology labs approach urine culture analysis. Designed using artificial intelligence (AI) and leveraging the quality of BD BBL plated media, the application uses digital imaging and software algorithms to determine the amount of growth on a urine culture plate from clean caught and catheterized samples. The BD Kiestra system's intelligent incubation and imaging device uses high-throughput robotics to perform time series imaging, coupled with machine learning so that plates with no significant growth can be released for disposal and plates with significant growth automatically go into a queue for clinician analysis. In many labs, urine cultures make up a significant part of the daily workload -- however, the majority of those samples have no growth or non-significant growth and don't require any additional work-up. Batch review of large volumes of plates with non-significant growth and release can help medical laboratorians focus their time and expertise on more clinically relevant tasks.