NEXT-GENERATION SEQUENCING APPLICATIONS FOR CLINICAL MICROBIOLOGY

With the rapid advancement of next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, clinical and public health microbiology laboratories are increasingly adopting NGS technology in their workflows and into their diagnostic cycles. In this talk, I will review aspects and considerations for applying NGS in the clinical microbiology settings, and highlight the impact of such implementation on the analytical and post-analytical stages of microbiological diagnosis and patient care. Special emphasis will be placed on the utilisation of NGS for inference of pathogen identification and antimicrobial susceptibility (ID/AST), patho-typing and epi-typing. The challenges associated with integration of NGS into routine use in frontline laboratories will be discussed.