Waters is taking major steps in the field of lab automation

Waters has been active in the laboratory market for more than sixty years and has operated under the motto 'deliver benefit' since its founding. The multinational is best known for its pioneering work in the field of chromatography, mass spectrometry and thermal analysis, but these times also require Waters to take steps in the field of laboratory automation. We spoke with Paul Wijnhoven and Evelien Dejaegere from Waters about the latest developments in that area.

By: Dimitri Reijerman.

Paul Wijnhoven, Account Manager at Waters' Chemistry team, says with some pride: "We recently have our own branch for lab automation." Evelien Dejaegere, Marketing Manager in the European Chemistry team and working on lab automation projects, complements him. “Given that we had nothing a year and a half ago, we are growing quickly. There is a particular demand for complete workflows for processing samples. How can we put it all together to require as few manual actions as possible? We have partnerships with a number of major parties in the lab automation sector where we work together for specific workflows. And since the beginning of 2020, Andrew Alliance has been acquired by us and fully integrated into Waters. As a result, the focus on lab automation has only increased.”

Waters' focus is on offering an automation platform that can be easily implemented in any laboratory, without having to be a specialist in the field. It consists of a central, intuitively used software (OneLab), which can be combined as desired with an intelligent pipetting setup (Pipette+) and an automation robot (Andrew+). In addition to the developed protocols and setups, there is also the option to develop protocols yourself via a simple editor and Waters provides customization to integrate the lab materials used into the robot layout and software.

The corona crisis has brought even more attention to lab automation, says Wijnhoven: “Since the corona crisis, our customers have started to think more about how lab automation can be integrated into their labs. I think we will continue to work more from home and in a staggered manner. So I do expect that the pandemic has significantly accelerated the integration of automation in the lab.”

Dejaegere: “We have collaborated a lot with other parties during corona. A very important one is that we had close cooperation with customers who were connected to the British NHS project. There were also extensions to Scandinavia and also the Netherlands and Belgium. Ultimately, we were able to commercialize a completely automated workflow kit (RUO) for detecting and quantifying the Sars-COV-2 signature NCAP peptide, including a new LC-MS analytical method.

In the future, accessibility of automation applications will play a major role, they think at Waters. Dejaegere: “We can play a role in making automation more accessible. And make it clear that it does not always have to be complex and that it does not necessarily require a specialist. Our platform is intuitive and easy.” Wijnhoven adds: “That supposed complexity is also what often deters customers. Furthermore, end users also want to move to a paperless environment. So working via the cloud or a shielded environment is becoming more important, which means that in the future you will have to go to the lab with a tablet.”