Hardy Diagnostics, a US-based manufacturer of medical devices for microbiological procedures, has designed an automated plate reader exclusively for the CompactDry plate line.
Image: The material source facilitates storage of the plates at room temperature for increased shelf life. Photo: Courtesy of Darko Stojanovic from Pixabay.
The Wizard CompactDry Plate Reader is set to automate the manual colony counting task on CompactDry plates for food samples, which takes hours to count the colony manually and results may vary from technician to technician.
Hardy said that the Wizard CompactDry Plate Reader is capable of bringing down the read time to seconds per plate, and saving images for digital storage.
In addition, the competitive price point allows all sizes and throughputs to employ automation for colony count and create standardization throughout their process.
The Wizard CompactDry plate reader, which is available for purchase now, is set to provide the tests to identify pathogens related to food including E. coli, coliforms, Salmonella, Listeria, Total Count, Enterobacteriaceae and more.
Hardy said that the use of dry material source instead of traditional agar facilitates storage of the plates at room temperature for increased shelf life.
Hardy Diagnostics claims that it is an FDA licensed manufacturer of medical devices for microbiological procedures in both clinical and industrial laboratories.
The company was founded in 1980 by Jay Hardy and Robert Shibata after they completed their Medical Technology training in the laboratory at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
In March 2019, the company has partnered with EliTechGroup, a manufacturer and distributor of in vitro diagnostic equipment and reagents, to distribute its MYCOFAST US, a rapid system to detect, enumerate and identify genital Mycoplasma hominis and Ureaplasma urealyticum.
MYCOFAST US is a simple-to-use system set to save time and costs for hospitals and clinics to improve the reliability of overall urogenital testing protocols.
In addition, EliTech has made significant impact in the clinical industry by improving reliability of testing using its new technology.
The system is a streamlined version of the traditional culture media method with enhanced sensitivity, which takes 24 hours for a positive result, and an additional 24 hours to confirm a negative.