More than thirty years ago, Rik Pepermans walked into an industrial research laboratory as a chemical engineer. Back then, the image was still: people in white coats, working manually at a lab table with no computer in sight. In the meantime, much of the lab work has been automated. Computers are everywhere and lab technicians are increasingly working from home. Has this proven useful in recent years, but will this remain the new standard?
Rik was involved in the transformation of the lab first as a researcher and later as an IT manager. Today he helps companies to digitize their Research & Development as an independent consultant. Today he looks ahead to the lab of the future by looking at four trends.
Laboratories are lagging behind
Let's start with this question: why aren't laboratories there yet where many factories are? Think of fully automated processes, assembly line work and modern technologies that take over most of the human work. Rik: "That's because of the type of work. Laboratory work for research is almost impossible to standardize. Every research is different. In labs you can automate a limited number of actions because they are always the same, but the rest remains human work. In this way, lab work for product development and quality control can be more standardized, but there are always steps that are carried out by people in between.
If you make a lot of the same cabinets, that can be automated well. For custom work, you hire a carpenter. He does use electric drills and saws, but they are still needed to make the product to size. That's how it works in laboratories too. But laboratory management often thinks: if despite machines, people are still needed to bring samples from A to B, then we'll just keep it that way. So the sector lags behind the manufacturing industry."
The lab is digitizing
That doesn’t mean that nothing is happening in the industry. “There is more interest in modern technologies and how we can use them in laboratories. A modern device takes many more measurements simultaneously and more accurately than a human. That is of course interesting.”
1: New technologies
In recent years you have heard many terms: artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). Each and every one of these are hypermodern technologies that are increasingly being used in the laboratory sector. “If you have a lot of data and draw the same conclusions from it, you can use AI and ML. The machine then learns to recognize certain patterns and uses them to determine conclusions for future measurements. But is it really necessary? I think it may be a hype.”
Rik finds other technologies an interesting addition, such as augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR). “Large companies are working on AR and MR. Lab staff wear smart glasses that show information. For example, whether an instrument is calibrated or not, and whether they have the right jar or dish for their measurement. The glasses also read the measurement results. That makes the risk of human error a lot smaller. That is very positive, because care is important in this work.”
| Voice control is another technology that is becoming increasingly normal. This is being experimented with in laboratories. Controlling machines with speech is useful in specific cases, but recording results by saying them out loud instead of writing them down afterwards is especially interesting. This also reduces the risk of errors. |
2: Cloud-based labs
Having remote access to all the information and computing power you need to do your job: about ten years ago this was a cloud-based computing for many companies still a distant prospect. It seems a long time ago that your documents were only accessible via your computer at work. Nowadays everything is in the cloud. The laboratory sector is also looking at this.
“Fully equipped labs where you can work remotely as a lab technician – cloud-based labs – are not yet very common, but they are an option to consider. Why would you need your own physical lab for just a few measurements? It is very useful if you can use a remote lab. The willingness of companies and lab staff to embrace the change may well be the limiting factor.”
Communication is the key
“The laboratory world uses hundreds of terms. For digitalization, these terms first have to be defined in such a way that computers can understand them. The challenge is not only the number of terms. In a lab, you have many different materials, substances and utensils. The definitions of these differ per lab. Each lab is a kind of self-contained island with its own meanings of terms. That makes translating lab language into a universal computer language very difficult.”
This means that there needs to be more collaboration between lab technicians all over the world: first standardize the language and then determine a good definition for the computers. “With cloud labs, for example, you see that this problem has been solved internally, but only for one lab. It may well be that the definitions used elsewhere do not match those of the cloud lab.”
3: Virtual vs. Physical
Then there is virtualization. In virtual laboratories, the physical lab is replaced by computer simulations. “Instead of making and measuring the substance, you let the computer do a calculation to predict a certain property.” That has been happening for decades, but there is still a big gap between the physical and virtual lab worlds.
“They are two separate disciplines, with different experts. That is a shame; being closer together would be incredibly powerful. You can then first perform a test virtually to assess whether a physical test is worthwhile or not. You can also compare a physical test with a simulation to gain new insights. I think that merging 'virtual' and 'physical' into a 'digital lab twin' is an important aspect for the lab of the future.”
4: Lab technicians of the future
There is also a shift in the role of laboratory personnel. “Just like in any other industry, when a lab is automated, there is a new role for personnel. People are still needed to move materials from machine A to machine B, but they also take on a role as an ‘interpreter-translator’: they have to translate the data from one machine to the other, because the devices do not (yet) communicate well with each other.
The communication with the stakeholders of the laboratory work is a role of the laboratory technicians that could do with a bit more attention: which measurements best answer the question, what can be derived from a measurement, what else can be done with the result. The laboratory technician becomes less of an executor, but more of a manager of the lab.
“Nowadays, lab workers can work more remotely. That has become apparent in recent years. You no longer have to be in the lab all the time, just to prepare your test. You can read and analyze the results at home.”
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