St. Paul, Minn.-based 3M Food Safety has been named a 2022 Edison Awards gold winner in the Commercial Technology category for its 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced.
The Edison Awards globally recognize, honor and foster innovations and innovators whose solutions make a positive impact in the world, according to a news release.
“All of us at 3M Food Safety are incredibly grateful to receive this award honoring our innovations in food safety technology that enable labs to produce reliable results with operational efficiency,” Mario De La Torre, global portfolio manager for 3M Food Safety, said in the release. “The 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced has been a critical tool for alleviating some of the stress felt by laboratories amid ongoing labor shortages with its impressive time-saving features.”
3M Food Safety launched the 3M Petrifilm Plate Reader Advanced in 2021 as an enhancement of previous technology that allows food safety professionals to enumerate microorganisms quickly and accurately. The technology is a small peripheral device containing a five-megapixel camera, versatile bar code reader and fixed artificial intelligence that expedites result interpretation, the release said.
3M Petrifilm Plates are inserted into the reader device, which automatically delivers an imaging display and information on a USB-connected computer in six seconds or less, according to the release. The device can enumerate 10 3M Petrifilm Plates and the 3M Petrifilm Staph Express Disk and includes software that allows users to enter other relevant information pertaining to the samples. By reducing the time to count, the plate reader assists laboratories in improving productivity by automatically counting, recording and reporting results with up to 94%-time reduced – when observed on the 3M Petrifilm Aerobic Count Plate with high counts, the release said.
