Yes Sue, I've looked at quite a lot of that research too. qPCR machines (Quantitative or Real-time PCR machines) are better now at detecting small amounts DNA of NTMs.
My feeling is they could start beingb a lot 'kinder' to the patient....(especially if you must have bronchoscopies and can't get info out of a hospital without a long wait).
Most of us only want to know if we are still sero-positive for an NTM. They could use a qPCR machine to quickly tell if we are still positive FIRST, (i,e, if they still find any mycobactetial DNA) and relay that info to us much more quickly. Then the exact NTM disease typing could take longer after that. A lot of our tests are just looking for persistence of the same NTM we were originally diagnosed with. To wait so long for any results EACH TIME is very unfair to us patients.
But instead they continue to do it the cheaper, older way, slowly growing the bacteria in a dish, and make us wait and wait and wait.

I'm just grumbling, LOL. But I really do think most other patient groups with other kinds of diseases would complain a lot. The long long delay we face each time just makes me feel like the system doesn't care much about us.