Italy’s national police force, known as the Carabinieri, recently implemented a rapid DNA program that is already making a significant impact on criminal investigations. The Carabinieri’s scientific investigation unit installed the Applied Biosystems™ RapidHIT™ ID System in early 2019, achieved ISO/IEC 17025 accreditation in less than nine months, and shortly thereafter began using it to process samples and solve cases.
A recent customer profile article describes multiple case studies, including ones in which buccal/cheek swab samples from suspects have been used to generate results in only 90 minutes—these results have then been compared to offender databases (i.e., the Banca Dati Nazionale del DNA) to obtain search results while a suspect is still in custody. In other cases, samples taken directly from human remains and crime scene evidence were also processed, generating rapid results leading to quick identification and resolution of serious crimes.
“The extreme ease of its use, the quickness of the analyses, and the accuracy of the results proved the RapidHIT ID System to be a trustworthy technology for immediate use as part of our laboratory’s routine,” said Andrea Berti, Ph.D., Forensic Biologist and Lt. Colonel of the Carabinieri. “We believe that it can satisfy multiple needs that we face every day during our work; in particular, the analysis of urgent samples (for comparison with references or single biological traces). Moreover, we are confident that it can also represent a valid alternative to help reduce our backlog of samples from cases of crimes of low entity, which constitute a significant percentage of our activity.”
Read the complete article to learn more.
For forensics, human identification or paternity/kinship use only. Not for use in diagnostic or therapeutic applications.
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