Review of LabAutomation event 2023

The LabAutomation event, on Tuesday, March 21 in the 1931 Brabanthallen Congress Center in Den Bosch, attracted 261 visitors this edition. With an extensive lecture program and an information market, they were informed of the latest developments in the efficient automation of modern laboratories.

Brigitta Witte from Janssen Biologics opened the lecture program. She explained how the manufacturer of medicines and vaccines tries to put the principle of a 'predictive plant' into practice. FHI spoke to Witte earlier about this project where end-to-end automation is applied.

After a number of pitches and a break, parallel lectures were held. Mathilde Broekhuis from UMCG Eriba talked about how so-called iPSCs (induced pluripotent stem cells) are generated and how this cell culture is automated. Through automation, the UMCG has managed to quadruple its cell culture capacity.

Maarten Stol (BrainCreators) discussed artificial intelligence (AI). He mentioned the limitations of current AI, the importance of good training data and possible applications of AI in the lab. Tom Hofste from Radboud University Medical Center explained how high-throughput sequencing workflows, which are used for clinical care, are possible thanks to a high-performance computer cluster.

The lecture by Richard Mulders (Qaducation/Rescop) focused on the ALCOA principle that applies to data integrity. By applying this principle, the integrity of data in automated systems can be guaranteed. Herke van Hoof, affiliated with the University of Amsterdam, provided insight into machine learning and the necessary conditions to apply this AI mechanism. The final lecture was delivered by Rik Pepermans. He stated that data is the main product of a lab and talked about the 'data-information-knowledge-wisdom pyramid' framework.

The LabAutomation event ended with a well-deserved drink among toiling lab robots. Visitors and exhibitors were already cautiously speculating about the possible topics during the 2024 edition.