Consolidation of the HERA-WGS-infrastructure and capacity building at NIPH to enhance microbial surveillance and preparedness

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) is the national infection control institute in Norway and is the national reference laboratory for a total of 30 bacteria and viruses. Microbial surveillance is an essential part of the NIPH laboratory activity. The role as reference laboratory covers research, laboratory-based surveillance and characterization of pathogens, outbreak investigations and response, as well as specialized microbiological assays. We received in 2021/2022 a grant from HERA for enhancement of whole genome sequencing (WGS) infrastructure and capacity at our institute, with COVID-19 response as the main aim. Within the HERA-financed project, we have focused on laboratory automation and digitalization. In particular, we have purchased pipetting robots and barcoding system, and we have worked with integration of laboratory instrumentation in the SARS-CoV-2 WGS workflow with our laboratory information management system (LIMS). In addition, we have further developed our LIMS to serve as a database for all laboratory results for more efficient downstream sequence analysis. We now aim at consolidating the achieved deliverables from the HERA grant on SARS-CoV-2. The general objective of this project is therefore to further strengthen and expand our microbial WGS as well as other genomic based analyses. We will do this by digitalisation of data handling and automation of our laboratory workflow, including digitalisation of instrument data, expanding the current WGS activity to several pathogens, develop downstream visualisation and reporting platforms, and streamline the related processes. This will allow us to enhance microbial surveillance, more rapidly and efficiently respond to the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as enhance our preparedness for future pathogens and other cross-border threats.