Sepsis is the primary cause of death from infection. Globally, an estimated 18 million people die from sepsis annually, exceeding deaths caused by HIV/AIDS, breast cancer, and prostate cancer combined1. Early sepsis diagnosis and targeted antimicrobial (AM) therapy reduce the length of intensive care for patients and cost by 30%2. The current gold standard, using blood cultures (BC), takes 12-72 h to detect pathogens in the blood and even longer to identify the exact pathogen and its AM susceptibility for optimal therapy. The aim of this study was to determine whether the QuickFISHTMBC test (AdvanDx, Woburn, MA) could be robust, timesaving and specific in the clinical microbiology laboratory setting, for identification of the pathogens causing life-threatening bloodstream infections.