NGD’s automated whole genome sequencing and bioinformatic result generation is accelerating Sheba’s ability to detect the spread of drug-resistant bacterial infection
CAMBRIDGE, MA / ACCESS Newswire / September 23, 2026 / NGD Infection Prevention (NGD) today announces that its automated WGS sample preparation and bioinformatic system is fully operational at Sheba Medical Center in Israel, the largest medical center in the Middle East, and is now enabling the real-time detection of the transmission of infection, for use by Sheba’s Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) team in guiding interventions to prevent the spread of bacterial infection. This is NGD’s first installation in the Middle East, where the need for early intervention is acute due to the high rate of life-threatening carbapenem-resistant infection.
The fully automated NGD200 system prepares up to 48 bacterial samples in a single run, completing every step of the workflow from lysis to extraction to library construction, providing a single pooled aliquot ready for loading into a flowcell in just 4 hours, with little hands-on time and without requiring specialized technician training. With the automation enabling a very low overall cost per sample, the NGD system makes routine in-hospital transmission detection operationally practical and suited for widespread routine use.
Carbapenems are antibiotics of last resort, and are a serious challenge for hospitals not only in Israel and across the Middle East, but increasingly at hospitals in the United States, with recent reporting that the rate of the most carbapenem-resistant bacterial infections has increased 470% in the past 5 years.1 Israel has previously implemented a national strategy to contain the spread of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales.2
“Understanding whether bacterial infections are likely to be transmission-related in real-time is essential to interrupting transmission,” said Dr. Sharon Amit, Director of the Clinical Microbiology Lab at Sheba Medical Center. “The NGD200 platform has given us a practical way to generate high-resolution whole-genome level transmission detection, with very low technician hands-on time and without specialized training, with the integrated automated bioinformatics providing us instant result generation for our IPC colleagues. By integrating sequencing and bioinformatic results with their epidemiological and infection-control expertise, we have greatly strengthened our ability to recognize transmission patterns early and focus interventions to have real impact for the welfare of our patients at Sheba.”
“This launch reflects the importance of making genomic surveillance usable in the real-world hospital environment,” said Eugene Bragin, Chief Technology Officer, NGD Infection Prevention. “The value of sequencing is not only in producing data for research; here it is also delivering results in a format that clinical microbiology and infection-prevention teams can interpret and act on. Our goal is to make that process repeatable, efficient and scalable.”
“Israel recognizes the need for disciplined, coordinated action to prevent the spread of drug-resistant bacteria,” said Paul Rhodes, Chief Executive Officer, NGD Infection Prevention, “and the team at Sheba, one of the Middle East’s foremost medical centers and in the top 10 worldwide, are highly dedicated, motivated, and focused. The feedback they provide to us as they begin to use NGD’s system is helping us refine its ease-of-use, which will be valuable everywhere it is deployed.”
The Sheba launch reflects NGD’s leading role in the United States and globally in providing hospitals with an end-to-end, cost-conscious approach to real-time genomic transmission detection. It has been designed to support efficient sequencing workflows with low hands-on time per sample performed by non-specialized microbiology lab technicians at the throughput and cost per sample required to use prospective sequencing to detect transmission.
About NGD Infection Prevention
NGD Infection Prevention provides a fully automated, end-to-end whole-genome sequencing platform and bioinformatics and result-generation pipeline, enabling hospitals to detect and prevent transmission in real-time. The NGD200 system processes 48 bacterial samples, with low hands-on time without the need for specialized technicians, while NGD’s EpiAssist automates transmission network analysis and root cause determination, delivering actionable reports overnight at the low per-sample cost needed for broad adoption. NGD has a laboratory in Cambridge, MA, a business office in Boston, and subsidiaries in the UK and Israel.
About Sheba Medical Center
Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer is a major academic medical center in Israel serving patients, clinicians and researchers across a broad range of specialties. Sheba’s infection-prevention, clinical microbiology and epidemiological teams work across clinical care and research to address healthcare-associated and drug-resistant infections.
Media Contact: Nicole Brokob
Director of Marketing & Communications, NGD
nbrokob@ngdinfectionprevention.com
Press Inquiries: press@nextgen-dx.com
1 Rankin, D. A., Stahl, A., Sabour, S., Khan, M. A., Armstrong, T., Huang, J. Y., Baggs, J., & Walters, M. S. (2025). Changes in carbapenemase-producing carbapenem-resistant enterobacterales, 2019 to 2023. Annals of Internal Medicine, 178(12), 1820-1824. https://doi.org/10.7326/ANNALS-25-02404
2 World Health Organization, “Facing the threat of antibiotic-resistance: Israel’s success to prevent and control the spread of carbapenem-resistant bacteria,” November 8, 2017. https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/facing-the-threat-of-antibiotic-resistance-israel-s-success-to-prevent-and-control-the-spread-of-carbapenem-resistant-bacteria
SOURCE: Next Gen Diagnostics
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