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Virtual Laboratory: unleashing a new era as a positive outcome of COVID 19
By Somnath Mukherjee
The world is passing through a reneissa – moving from the traditional on premises lookout to a more virtual reality. COVID – 19 has become the escalator to this transformation journey. Back in 2014-15, need of organization and workforce were more to adopt to a Digital Journey, which was a nice Phrase adopted by the IT organization to generate more business. Drive got aggravated during 2018-19, but still that thrush was missing. However, the world has undergone a seismic shift in last couple of months. Almost overnight, the needs of organizations and workforces have changed drastically. We have never faced a situation to get into a self-imposed quarantine stage to protect us. Thus become more reliant to Digital Journey and thereby Virtual existence.
Organizations are feeling necessity of remote operation management and getting used to it. While the traditional lookout of managing Research environment at the physical Laboratory has suddenly become obsolete. IoLT (Internet of Laboratory Things) has become more realistic word. This is by far the best disruption we have noticed in the field of Laboratory Innovation. With innovation being a general pursuit for most of the service Providers, R&D positions itself in the midst of attention. Couple of factors which are working as an enhancer to drive this movement are like “Customer Experience of an R&D Lab at Home Environment”, “Prudent Safety and Security towards Data Transmission” etc. Hence, service providers are now paying highest attention to set up an environment which will simulate the laboratory environment at Home. Definitively it is not an easy thing to do as R&D has been traditionally done in controlled settings.
IoLT framework has been there in the discussion tray for some time now. IT service organizations have come up with various use cases based on IoLT, which are promising, undoubtedly. However, under the current scenario post COVID-19, IoLT coupled with Digital Twin can be killer proposition to bring R&D environment close to the doorstep of an user. A “digital twin” is a virtual and connected copy of the real production process. This can be used in the process of Cell Culture in Vaccine development through prediction of Cell Culture process in Bioreactor. To better control the process, scientist need a platform to enable In-Context Data Visualization in a 3D space. Scientist will also be able to monitor the process parameter remotely. Moreover, this real time data can be used to develop a Gamification App for training purpose. SciInformatics will be able to develop this Digital Twin Model over IoLT Platform for a complex reaction with higher percentage of yield.
As described in Pic 2, this model may work as below:
- It collects data of Reactors through various probes.
- These data will then pass through various layers of “Digital Twin Framework” and send it to cloud.
- Data from cloud will be passed to Unity3D to create a Augmented reality image of the reactor, which can be accessed to a mobile platform.
- Data from the cloud can be available to a controller app in mobile, which will help the scientist to control different parameters of reactor.
SciInformatics has strong expertise to develop this model using Digital Twin Framework and IoLT. With a strong domain experience in basic research, consultants from SciInformatics will be able to handhold researchers to ensure maximum benefit out of this.
Author:
Somnath Mukherjee PMP®, CSM® As the Chief Executive Officer, Somnath drives SciInformatics business strategy, customer acquisition and relationships in the Healthcare and Life Sciences space. Before SciInformatics, Somnath was the Sr. Program Manager at TechMahindra, he was instrumental in setting up the practice for Healthcare and Life Sciences in 2015 for ValueLabs and ran the same business portfolio in 2008 to 2015 at HCL Technologies that served a global marketplace. He was the founding member of LabVantage Solutions – Asia Pacific, a TCG group company and a leader in LIMS area between 1998-2004. A Business leader who believes rate of change within the organization is one of the key attributes for driving change in the marketplace. Every project must deliver value to its customers.
