Patent Document ID: 8688384
Application ID: 10556365
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method for detection of an outbreak without prior suspicion of an outbreak and without requiring prior taxonomic classification, which method comprises: obtaining vibration spectrum for a microorganism in a sample of interest using an instrument comprising a vibrational spectrometer, a processing means, a first spectral database ( 10 ) and a first information database ( 200 ), for obtaining information about the microorganism in the sample of interest; classifying the microorganism in the sample of interest based on the obtained vibration spectrum and without requiring prior taxonomic classification, the classification being performed by establishing vibrational spectroscopic similarity of the obtained vibrational spectrum of the microorganism in the sample of interest to a vibrational spectrum of a microorganism that is present in the first spectral database, and the microorganism in the sample of interest being not yet represented in the first spectral database if no vibrational spectroscopic similarity is established; adding the obtained vibration spectrum to the first spectral database for classifying subsequent microorganisms in a sample of interest; adding information about time and place of isolation of the microorganism in a sample of interest and information about an object or an individual from which the microorganism was isolated to the first information database; and determining the number of samples of interest obtained from different objects or individuals with the same microorganism over a certain period of time, the finding of a greater than normal number of samples of interest of the same microorganism being indicative of an outbreak, wherein, the vibrational spectrometer, for determining a vibrational spectrum ( 160 ) of the microorganism in the sample of interest, is linked to the processing means; the processing means, for both (i) executing a computer program which comprises computer executable software code for analysis of the signal obtained from the spectrometer and (ii) for classification ( 190 ) of the microorganism in the sample of interest, is linked to the spectrometer and to the databases ( 10 ) and ( 200 ); the first spectral database ( 10 ), which comprises zero or more vibrational spectra of microorganisms for establishing similarity of the spectrum of the microorganism in the sample of interest to the vibrational spectrum of a microorganism of which the spectrum is present in the first spectral database ( 10 ), is linked to the processing means; and the first information database ( 200 ) is linked to the processing means.