Question: What do you hope to work on in the future?

Bethany Dearlove answered on 22 Jun 2014:

This is a big question, as the subject is moving really fast! I think we’re entering a new phase in clinical microbiology at the moment, and DNA sequencing is going to become more and more important. There’s been a lot of attention on personalised medicine recently, and the possibility of routine diagnosis via DNA sequencing extends this to being personal to the microbes in/on their body as well as their human genome. For me, the idea I find most exciting is being able to take a sample from a patient at the beginning of shift, and having genomic results as to how best to treat them available a few hours later – in contrast to current practice that often requires the culture of slow-growing pathogens.

However, for this to be possible, we need methods that can handle the huge amounts of data that sequencing will create, and provide easy-to-use results for on the ward. This is where my work fits in – developing and applying the methods to give the doctors and nurses the information they need. I don’t know what diseases I might get to work on in the future, but I love how rewarding working in this area is as I know what I find is helping treat patients better.