Microbiology and infectious diseases (or now adays infection is a medical speciality that focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, prevention and control of infections in the community, hospital  and other healthcare settings. It is an evolving science with changing epidemiology of existing infections and emergence of novel infectious agents.

Diagnosis of infection has evolved dramatically over the last 25 years moving away from culture techniques in virology to advanced molecular techniques, similarly there is a huge leap on the bacteriology mycology site to advance our molecular diagnostics and there has been a huge expansions of molecular repositors, but at present they still complimentary to traditional  culture and antimicrobial sensitivity techniques.   Additionally there has been new advances in biomarker diagnosis recognising host factors, microbial factors and their impact not only on diagnosis but also on disease progression and clinical decisions, such as biomarkers in the blood, genetic investigations or meta genomics.

The discovery of penicillin in early 20th century made infection as a speciality ever more interesting subject with new discovery of antimicrobial molecules and vaccines, including novel mRNA vaccines, makes the subject very exciting.  One can say antibiotics and vaccines have saved more lives than any other medication or medical technology in the world.   

Despite that there are ever increasing challenges including the spread of increasing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) globally; microbes can evolve and sometime this evolution happens faster than the advancement of medical science and technologies.  It can also lead to emergence of new infections and pandemics which makes it necessary to invest more in new experiments and different approaches to identify the optimal treatment for a patient.

To overcome these challenges microbiology and infection over the years have embraced the innovation strategy in diagnostics, including rapid diagnostics, near patients and meta genomics, new vaccines and therapeutic models with a view to offering a optimistic future globally.