Core innovation to address laboratory staff challenges

Sometimes innovation means delivering transformative new-to-world technology to healthcare providers and patients. Innovation can also mean enhancing the products and solutions our customers depend on across the healthcare continuum—products that serve as the backbone of care. This continued innovation in our core portfolio of products and services can meaningfully improve efficiencies, safety, patient experience and ultimately outcomes.  

When you look at the healthcare landscape today, it’s impossible to ignore challenges like burnout, staffing shortages and cost pressures. Because healthcare professionals are being asked to do more with less, in new ways and settings, solutions need to fit into their workflow and to help make their jobs easier. Think flexible, scalable, interoperable.  

Let’s zoom in on how continuing to innovate in our core portfolio can help address some of these challenges by taking a closer look at some recent updates to our benchtop BD MAX™ Molecular Diagnostic System.  

The power of benchtop testing in molecular diagnostics 

Benchtop testing platforms are important because they offer robust diagnostic solutions to labs that they might not otherwise have access to, and without having to extend turn- around time by sending samples to a centralised lab for test. For their space-saving design, they offer an extensive menu of tests for infectious diseases, such as healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), respiratory infections, sexually transmitted infections, and gastrointestinal infections.  

Our benchtop molecular testing platform, the BD MAX™ System, is installed in thousands of hospitals and labs around the world, yet customers helped us to identify unmet needs—like better ergonomics, maximising counter space, and enhancing lab efficiency with on-demand analytics. Because diagnostic testing remains a vital data point in clinician decision-making and treatment plans, every improvement to user experience and functionality that we make to any of our platforms ultimately holds the potential to improve patient care. Continuous improvement is important.  

Responding to your challenges on the BD MAX™ System 

Our research and development team understood that in the daily workings of a busy lab facing time- and resource-challenges, impactful modifications to a platform that lab technicians already relied upon could be a more seamless way to provide the desired improvements. “We listened and responded to our customers’ feedback, and we focused on innovating in areas that would help them most in improving efficiency and workflow,” said Josh Keller, Director of Product Development & Engineering at BD.  

For example, for labs where counter space is at a premium, we introduced a variable height swivel arm mount with keyboard tray to give our customers additional space underneath to process samples and provide optimal viewing and positioning for each individual in the lab. To enable secure connectivity and on-demand analytics for anytime, anywhere access results via an internet browser, we integrated enhanced hardware designed to improve system robustness, and BD Synapsys™ middleware. And to help reduce plastic waste generated in the lab while providing a convenient storage solution for re- testing or reflex testing, we added a resealable septum cap, which can be used also to store specimens after processing. 

“Innovating in our core portfolio means that our customers can enjoy the evolution of a product that they know and trust while we continue to anticipate and meet their needs in years to come,” Keller said.