BACT/ALERT® VIRTUO®
Automated System for Faster Blood Culture
The first fully automated blood culture system, helping to refine and redesign laboratory workflow to maximize efficiency, while providing faster clinically impactful results.
Disclaimer: Product availability varies by country. Please consult your local bioMérieux representative for product availability in your country.
CE-IVDR and FDA Approved.
- Image
- System Overview
- Media
- Services & Support
- Specs & Resources
System Overview
BACT/ALERT® VIRTUO® opens up a new dimension in blood culture management, delivering fast and reliable results for bloodstream infections.
The system offers an efficient and adaptable workflow with fully automated bottle loading, scanning, incubation and unloading, including blood fill-level measurement. This enables early, sensitive and reliable detection across a broad range of microorganisms in blood and other sterile body fluids. Used with BACT/ALERT® culture media bottles, the smart system maximizes speed of detection while maintaining high analytical sensitivity.
- From 4 to 9 hours faster time to detection1,2
- Advanced automation to free staff resources for higher-value tasks
- Integrates seamlessly into various lab sizes and environments, including sample-reception labs
- Can be used with MAESTRIA™ microbiology software to consolidate blood culture sample data across multiple instrument results and your LIS
Unlock efficiency & ease-of-use
Your laboratory faces some critical challenges: higher volumes, the need to use staff resources effectively and the need for fast turnaround times. BACT/ALERT® VIRTUO® seamlessly integrates your blood culture workflow to meet these challenges, providing efficient and actionable results to help impact better patient outcomes.
Boost your lab’s efficiency
- 360° Smart automated scanning
- Recognizes bottle, sample and patient accession ID labels
- Real-time blood fill-level measurement (in ml) per bottle to monitor inoculated blood volume for each blood culture sample
- Smart incubation for faster, optimized growth
- Closed heating system for thermal stability with continuous monitoring
- Enhanced detection algorithms supporting faster time‑to‑detection for most organisms2,3
- Advanced robotics and automation for 6x faster bottle loading and 14x faster negative bottle unloading4
- Unique Drop & Go concept with automated loading and conveyor
- Automatic negative bottle discarding in weight-monitored waste
- Automated cell calibration
Ease-of-use – focus skilled resources where most valuable
BACT/ALERT® VIRTUO® is versatile and scalable for almost any size laboratory – you can even place systems in other locations outside of the routine microbiology lab.
- Intuitive touchscreen offering enhanced ease-of-use and data management
- Real-time alerts of non-conforming samples after loading, based on personalized thresholds
- Unsurpassed 24h delayed-entry algorithm: reliability that reduces routine manual checks
- Fewer steps and hands-on reduced time by 63%1
- Automated negative bottle unloading allows staff to focus on added-value samples
Flexible integration into any lab
- Modular design to meet increasing sample volume needs: capacity evolving from 428 to 1712 bottles
- Space-efficient: best capacity/footprint ratio4 – integrates seamlessly into various lab sizes and environments, including sample-reception labs
MAESTRIA™: Information at your fingertips 24/7
Can integrate with MAESTRIA™ middleware to connect instruments and your LIS for increased visibility – a “control tower” view – and easy information flow:
- Automatic alerts and remote access to blood culture data such as blood volumes collected; time to detection; positive vs. negative analysis; and more
- Consolidates patient data for easier and more powerful KPI reporting
References
1. Halperin at al. Microbiol Spectr. 2022 Oct 26;10(5):e0143622.
2. Mazulli et al. (2023). Impact of Implementation of BacT/Alert Virtuo on Blood Culture Time to Positivity in Sepsis Patients, Microbiology Spectrum
dans les precedentes brochures
3. Somily AM. et al. (2018). Time-to-detection of bacteria and yeast with the BACTEC FX versus BacT/Alert Virtuo blood culture systems. Ann Saudi Med
4. Internal R&D study data: BACT/ALERT VIRTUO vs. BACT/ALERT 3D
5. Internal data. BACT/ALERT VIRTUO vs BD BACTEC FX systems comparison.
Blood Culture Media
The BACT/ALERT® VIRTUO® system uses BACT/ALERT® FAN® Plus and BACT/ALERT® Standard bottles designed for blood, biological sterile body fluids and platelets (blood bank applications).
With a range of optimized BACT/ALERT® culture media bottles, you achieve reliable microorganism recovery and faster detection across diverse clinical conditions, without additional steps.
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BACT/ALERT® Culture Media Bottles
Innovative & Optimized Culture Media
BACT/ALERT® culture media offers a comprehensive range of media bottles to ensure the recovery of a wide variety of microorganisms including bacteria, mycobacteria, and fungi – including our next generation Fastidious Antimicrobial Neutralization Plus media (FAN® PLUS) offering optimized time to detection and recovery.
Services & Support
Our lab consultancy experts can help your lab optimize workflows and enhance productivity, while our blood culture medical education experts support better quality management and optimized practices. In addition, our highly responsive service team is here to help keep your lab operations running continuously, via our hotline or on-site intervention
Specs & Resources
Technical Specifications
Size:
| Height | Width | Depth | Length | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| in | cm | in | cm | in | cm | in | cm | |
| Instrument (Door Closed) | 77.2* | 196.0* | 28.7 | 73.0 | 35.8 | 91.0 | ||
| Instrument (Door Open) | 77.2* | 196.0* | 37.0 | 94.0 | 65.0 | 165.0 | ||
| Shipping Crate | 89.0 | 226.1 | 36.0 | 91.4 | 48.0 | 121.9 | ||
| Shipping Crate Ramp | 85.0 | 215.9 | ||||||
*Instrument Height dimension does not include optional Warning Light Tower.
Instrument Weight:
| lb | kg | |
|---|---|---|
| Total Shipping Weight | 1084 | 491 |
| Weight of Instrument (empty) | 643 | 292 |
| Weight of Instrument (with bottles) | 707 | 320 |
| Instrument Packaging Weight | 441 | 200 |
