Microbiology for Healthcare

With the combination of experienced microbiologists and a focus on quality systems, Melbec Microbiology can offer a number of services to the healthcare industry.

Medical devices

Compliance with microbiological standards for medical devices can be complex. From understanding microbial contaminants to ensuring products are effective and safe, a trusted testing partner is essential. With the combination of experienced microbiologists and a focus on quality systems, Melbec Microbiology can offer a number of services to the medical device industry.

Wound Care

Microbial infections are the cause of most chronic wounds, and even for wounds that are not clinically infected, they still often contain colonised organisms, meaning wounds of this nature are deemed to be at risk for microbial infection.

We are experienced in the assessment and evaluation of wound care technologies including anti-microbial wound dressings and smart dressings in line with standard methods including AATCC TM 100 and ASTM E2149.

Textiles, Plastics, and Coatings

Microbiological testing can be carried out to determine the efficacy of anti-microbial finishes or anti-microbial impregnated materials for textile, plastics, and coatings product claims. Testing can be completed using standard organisms or adapted for specific organisms related to product claims. These might include antibiotic-resistant strains such as MRSA and VRE, fungal spores, or Clostridium difficile.

Testing includes

AATCC TM 30 (Test Method for Antifungal Activity, Assessment on Textile Materials: Mildew and Rot Resistance of Textile Materials)

The two purposes of this test are to determine the susceptibility of textile materials to mildew and rot and to evaluate the efficacy of fungicides on textile material.

This test method provides a quantitative procedure for the evaluation of a product’s antibacterial activity. Assessment of an antibacterial finish on a textile material is determined by the degree of antibacterial activity intended by the use of such materials.

The objective is to detect bacteriostatic activity on textile materials. The results of using this procedure have been demonstrated by Committee RA31 to be reproducible by various laboratories working with materials containing residual amounts of antibacterial agents (as determined by chemical assay) after multiple standard washes. The method is useful for obtaining a rough estimate of activity in that the growth of the inoculum organism decreases from one end of each streak to the other and from one streak to the next resulting in increasing degrees of sensitivity. The size of the zone of inhibition and the narrowing of the streaks caused by the presence of the antibacterial agent permits an estimate of the residual antibacterial activity after multiple washes.

This test is used to determine the fungal resistance of plastics and polymeric materials, in the form of moulded and fabricated articles, tubes, rods, sheets, and film materials.

This test method is designed to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of non-leaching, antimicrobial-treated specimens under dynamic contact conditions. This dynamic shake flask test was developed for routine quality control and for screening tests to overcome difficulties in using classical antimicrobial test methods to evaluate substrate-bound antimicrobials.

This test specifies quantitative test methods to determine the antibacterial activity of all antibacterial textile products including nonwovens.

This test is applicable to all textile products, including cloth, wadding, thread and material for clothing, bedclothes, home furnishings, and miscellaneous goods, regardless of the type of antibacterial agent used (organic, inorganic, natural, or man-made) or the method of application (built-in, after-treatment or grafting).