Enabling Sustainability in LabOps

Technological innovations help keep up with resource challenges that arise in various industries and businesses. This is particularly true of the health sector, where increasing demands from policymakers and the public toward improved productivity, service quality, and the management and rationalization of ecological resources present an ongoing challenge.

Customer and patient desires to realize these changes have motivated a transformation in resource management and sustainable growth. Laboratory operations, or LabOps, has become the defining standard for pharmaceutical and biotech industries to stay competitively relevant while maximizing revenue cycles and operational success. LabOps assists in this goal by serving as an interface to a laboratory’s data, instruments, analyses, and reports. 

Sustainability in LabOps

With growing environmental sustainability trends, LabOps has been identified as an easy and viable solution by biotech and pharma companies to re-evaluate and re-implement their operations for a sustainable approach. This is encouraging as the global biotechnology and pharma industries maintain a higher carbon footprint compared to the semiconductor, forestry, and paper industries. With a reported 2019 climate footprint of two gigatons of carbon dioxide, or 4.4 percent of total global emissions, critical efforts are underway to incorporate sustainable approaches within research and production value chains. 

LabOps can go a long way in reducing costs surrounding annual laboratory tests concerning medical labs and global health care services. Seventy percent of medical decisions depend on the results of laboratory tests, and nearly 12 billion medical laboratory tests are analyzed on an annual basis in the US. Improving process efficiencies in this sector would mean saving up on test costs that represent up to 3.5 percent of total health costs. By motivating sustainable practices, in this case, greater investment in laboratory management to decrease costs and increase savings down the manufacturing and distribution line, LabOps helps leverage an organization’s needs for resource productivity and availability. As such, lab managers can work efficiently in contributing to the organization’s value chain, meet customer demands, and initiate further efforts for innovation. 

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, demands further increased, leading to even higher volumes of medical tests. The pandemic resulted in a 22 percent surge of increased investments in life science industry innovations with R&D between 2018 and 2019. These investments focused on the availability of crucial supplies, including cell-based and genome analysis kits and reagents, protein purification and separation kits and reagents, live animals, and general laboratory chemicals and equipment, such as plastic-ware, glassware, and disposables. 

As a result, pharma and biotech companies recognized the importance of being prepared for the unexpected, especially surrounding research errors and delays, lab supply delays and back orders, and a lack of adequate planning and communication. The reality of the pandemic encouraged innovation in LabOps systems around the world. Adaptation became a necessity as labs were required to change their operating principles due to potential virus transmission alongside a new wave of best practices that became established. 

As the pandemic minimized in-person communication and interaction, an essential aspect of LabOps, a centralized approach for rapid dissemination of information became necessary. Beyond the plethora of various digital platforms, such as WhatsApp, Slack, Facebook Messenger, and Zoom, lab managers required a means of communication that integrated with laboratory equipment monitoring, maintenance, and services. A dedicated laboratory management system would enable the continuation of valid research while providing a means to monitor the lab as well as the rest of the facility. Such a platform would provide lab managers, scientists, and engineers with the flexibility relevant to their work as characterized by three major advantages: LabOps monitoring that is tailored to users’ diverse needs, centralized management that provides significant data insights and accessibility, and resilient monitoring that is remote, real-time, comprehensive, and optimizes equipment usage and load balance. 

Elemental Machines Usage Intel Solution

Elemental Machines’ (EM) lab-wide equipment usage intel solution matches all the necessary characteristics for a dedicated lab monitoring platform. Merging hardware, software, and data science, EM’s intel solution draws usage data from almost any lab equipment. 

In this manner, operations can be monitored in real-time and usage history can be used to guide lab equipment service, relocation, removal, and purchase while facilitating the optimization of capital and operating resources. EM’s usage platform is highlighted by three applications: Element-U (Model EU2), the EM Cloud Dashboard, and the EM Data Interface. 

Element-U is a battery-operated device that clamps to a power cord and provides cellular backup. The EM Cloud Dashboard allows the user to visualize equipment usage remotely and at any point in time, including on one’s mobile device. The EM Data Interface supports the entire framework with an API that integrates secure data sharing to LIMS, ELN, QMS, or other software databases. Together, the three applications allow laboratory users to track the actual usage of lab equipment and have full control of the lab. 

A representative case study of EM’s usage platform involves Arbor BIO, a Cambridge, MA-based bio-discovery company focused on developing next-generation genomic medicine. Arbor’s Scientific Operations (SciOps) team fields requests from scientists largely surrounding the unavailability of equipment whenever it’s required. One such request involved the establishment of a second biosafety level 2 (BSL2) area to support an existing BSL2 space, with an estimated cost of around $200,000. 

To move forward with the investment, Arbor’s SciOps team required a means to validate usage data that would detail the actual equipment usage and, therefore, guide purchasing decisions and improve lab efficiency. Arbor Bio installed EM’s Element-U devices throughout various facilities, including on a biosafety cabinet (BSC) in an area of maximum throughput, a BSC in a small BSL2 tissue culture room, and a centrifuge in a shared lab space. By sensing the electric current of any piece of lab equipment, Element-U provides data on real-time status and historical usage of the equipment. Arbor’s SciOps team did just that by measuring the usage of the BSCs and centrifuge, manually comparing the data from lab scheduler software and EM’s Cloud Dashboard. 

Consequently, with the resultant usage data demonstrating that their current space already had enough capacity, Arbor’s SciOps team opted against investing in a new BSL2 space. The insights provided by EM’s intel solution helped the organization prioritize its expenditures and clarified discrepancies between reservations and actual equipment usage. 

Conclusion

Elemental Machines is a leader in its role as the technology platform for optimizing lab operations servicing research, clinical, diagnostic, and quality control labs around the world. Focusing on resilience, EM advocates a comprehensive monitoring strategy where data-driven decisions enable discovery, deployment, and optimization of equipment usage and load balance. With sustainability as the long-term goal, EM’s lab-wide equipment usage intel solution creates a resilient LabOps framework that enables lower carbon footprints and a stronger value chain for biotech, pharma, and other research-based organizations around the world. 

To learn more, visit elementalmachines.com.