About Colab

How would you feel if you obtained a master degree after years of intense studying, but ended up with a job where most of the time was spent doing repetitive tasks that do not require all those years of intense education? Would you feel frustrated? Would you feel confused and annoyed? Wouldn’t you want to do things that align with your intellectual capabilities rather than performing activities that can easily be taken over by a robot? In the age of automation and digitalization, people are anxious that their jobs may be taken over by machines and that they can’t compete with the high output of machines / robots / algorithms. What if we could transform these worries into something positive? Can people work together with their electronic ‘competitors’ in order to elevate their work content and achieve a greater performance in the context they are working in?
Colab is a workstation for clinical microbiologists that targets the above issue in the laboratory context. Our desk and field research showed us that up to 49 % of a clinical microbiologist’s lab time is spent on repetitive tasks that do not require the wealth of intellectual capabilities clinical microbiologists have. This workstation allows them to reduce the number of repetitive tasks and improve overall quality during inoculation. Colab also gives microbiologists a better insight into bacteria growth during the incubation phase with the help of AI. The Time To Result (TTR) would be reduced and the overall quality of a sample improved, not only benefiting patients due to quicker diagnosis, but also allowing microbiologists to focus on tasks they love to do within their field.