Pierre Boulud

Tell us about your expertise in the laboratory sector with a brief about your organisation, its initiatives, and the journey to date.

A family-owned company, bioMérieux has grown to become a world leader in the field of in vitro diagnostics. Our entrepreneurial adventure started in 1963, but our roots go all the way back to the 19th century and is anchored in the Mérieux’s family commitment to improve health, while maintaining the values of respect, accountability, transparency, and sharing.

Today, we have a direct presence in 45 countries, with almost 14,000 team members, and serving more than 160 countries with the support of a large distribution network. Our expertise in infectious diseases, continuous innovations in our diagnostic solutions, and extensive international presence enable us to successfully partner with laboratories and organisations worldwide. We work to ensure our diagnostic offer meets their evolving needs, and contributes to better patient care.

We specialize in Clinical applications, which represent 85% of our sales, we develop and produce diagnostic solutions that help healthcare professionals quickly and reliably determine a pathology, and provide them with crucial information for optimal patient care.  We also apply our expertise to meeting industrial microbiology needs, building innovative, precise technologies that ensure the quality and safety of food and pharmaceutical products.   

In your opinion, what areas in the laboratory sector are expected to evolve and what role is your organisation expected to play?

As the ageing population grows and the need for 24/7 services increases, laboratories are faced with a variety of challenges that impact their day-to-day activities. Labs often receive high volumes of samples that need to be processed quickly and accurately, because patients and healthcare providers need timely results.

I would expect to see more labs consolidating to offer greater testing efficiencies while managing costs, and in parallel an increase in decentralized testing to be closer to patients for urgent care and/or emergency situations.

Antimicrobial Resistance will continue to need diagnostic strategies to preserve the antibiotic arsenal as much as possible. bioMérieux provides rapid diagnostic solutions to enable targeted antibiotic therapy faster and support antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programs. Since 2022, bioMérieux established 13 Antimicrobial Stewardship Centers of Excellence (CoE) across the globe in partnership with hospitals to demonstrate the value of diagnostics in fighting against AMR. For central labs, our microbiology portfolio offers the most comprehensive diagnostic choice to meet laboratory needs worldwide. For decentralised tests, our Point-Of-Care solution offers rapid detection of multiple pathogens in approximately 15 minutes.

Give us an insight into your portfolio and solutions targeted at the Middle East region.

In the Middle East region and across the world, bioMérieux aims to advance the impact of Clinical Diagnostic in Healthcare by effectively developing and delivering to the market innovative solutions that address significant unmet operational and medical needs. Our equipment, tests and software deliver rapid, high-impact, actionable results in immunoassays, microbiology and molecular biology.

With a commitment to help fight antimicrobial resistance and as a leader in infectious diseases diagnostics, bioMérieux also provides state-of-the-art, reliable tools to make the most of the data generated with systems in the laboratory. MAESTRIA™, an innovative, integrated software solution is designed to orchestrate lab routine and transform data into insights, and CLARION is a secure, cloud-based clinical informatics software-as-a-service that connects and integrates disparate data into a single management application.

Tell us about your recent and upcoming investments and partnerships.

True to our pioneering spirit, bioMérieux’s teams continuously innovate to improve patient health and ensure consumer safety. Over the past few months, we have further enhanced our portfolio with solutions that are even faster, easier to use and closer to the patient.

In 2023, we brought a number of innovative solutions to market that targeted key needs and are in line with our company priorities around infectious diseases, AMS, Sepsis, Joint Infections, Point-of-Care, data management and more.

Most recently, we made an investment in Oxford Nanopore Technologies plc, a company that delivers a new generation of nanopore-based molecular sensing technology. Through this investment and partnership, the two companies intend to leverage Oxford Nanopore’s ground-breaking nanopore-based IVD solution and bioMérieux’s IVD expertise in R&D, Regulatory, Medical and Market Access. As part of the transaction, the two companies will establish an IVD Advisory Board to advance nanopore technology into routine clinical use.

What can visitors expect to see at your booth in Medlab Middle East 2024? What opportunities are you looking forward to?

We intend to still champion the diagnostic fight against Antibiotic Resistance and Sepsis. We will continue to push back technology limits, develop innovations, and invest in R&D to resolve diagnostic healthcare challenges. Finally, we will keep an eye on the need for diagnostic evolutions to meet unforeseen challenges.

Please tell us about your plans for the year 2024.

We have celebrated bioMérieux’s 60 year anniversary in 2023. bioMérieux remains resolutely focused on the future and on serving the health of future generations. Our motivation to uphold bioMérieux’s public health mission continues to be high and is echoed by the engagement of each of our team members at every level. Contributing collectively to the common good: is this not the most rewarding role a company can play?

Is there anything else you would like to add?

bioMérieux is excited to once again be at Medlab Middle East, and visitors can expect to see exciting new innovations around several key themes:

Point of Care
An innovative syndromic testing technology at the Point-of-Care for infectious diseases, the BIOFIRE® SPOTFIRE® solution offers accurate, fast, easy and actionable results in around 15 minutes.

Sepsis
Within our already complete Sepsis solution, the addition of VITEK® REVEAL™ offers rapid AST* results, and extensive antimicrobial coverage to effectively and efficiently manage bloodstream infections.

Antimicrobial Stewardship
VITEK® MS PRIME, a mass spectrometry MALDI-TOF analyzer, continues to provide a superior workflow for faster time to report results to positively impact patient care and AMS programs.

Infectious Disease & Emergency Care
VIDAS® KUBE™, an automated immunoanalyzer, benefits from keeping everything labs already appreciate about the recognized VIDAS® solution and makes automation even more accessible with its benchtop, stackable modular design, easy implementation and increased confidence in results.