Adequate clinical management of infectious diseases relies primarily on the accurate identification of the causal micro-organism and the production of reliable information on its antimicrobial susceptibility.1Traditional diagnostic methods in microbiology have limited the ability of laboratories to provide doctors with timely and clinically relevant information, but recent technology provides results in minutes or hours rather than days or weeks. In particular, molecular biological techniques have increased the speed and sensitivity of detection methods, as well as allowing laboratories to identify organisms that do not grow or grow slowly in culture. These techniques also allow microbiologists to identify genes that result in resistance to antibiotics and to “fingerprint” individual isolates for epidemiological tracking.2Recognition of newly emerging infectious diseases and control of antibiotic resistance in Streptococcus pneumoniae,Haemophilus influenzae,Moraxella catarrhalis,Staphylococcus aureus, and common Gram negative bacilli will rely heavily on these new technologies.