The Future of Lab Operations | Accelerate Laboratories Report

No White Coats for Laboratory Personnel

Although front and center at this event, laboratories and the professionals intimately involved with them are often overlooked when considering their social and economic value.

In fact, the word laboratory can immediately conjure up people in white coats doing tests on wooden benches. So far, so 1990.

During the Covid pandemic, a light was briefly shone on labs’ enormous significance to our lives. We waited for test results to allow us to go to work, we looked for information about new variants and we waited for a vaccine. This highlighted briefly just some of the important and transformational work that happens in thousands of laboratories by millions of scientists and technicians.

Now, however, labs have moved to the background once again.

Before collating and expressing the insightful views about laboratories of the future tabled at this event, it feels important to define laboratory in the context of this conversation. Those present represented lab innovation – from pure research to routine mass-testing; from medical, pharmaceutical and genetics, to battery technology.

The need to focus on the future function of labs, rather than generic labs was clear.

The group agreed that opportunities to magnify the value output of laboratories lie within the broad spectrum of data, automation/growth in data processing, and smart technology and systems. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning offer transformational change in value creation. Although there are some individual examples of its real-life deployment, we are at the start of an exponential curve.

A thread of discussion around the idea that systems could be self-validating created significant energy in the room, as well as friction between those who understood how transformational such a realized idea could be with those who saw the potential disaster. Regulators are clearly going to be either a key partner/enabler or barrier to smart developments. Or both.

What appears to be clear already is that the impacts of the growth of these technologies will be felt in all parts of laboratory operations: people, skills required, job satisfaction, locations, collaborations, and buildings. This is certainly not a time to be wedded to the bench.

Intimately linked, still early in its industrialization but a few stages ahead of smart technology, is automation and digitization. Certainly, for automation, there is more confidence and an immediate view of the tangible benefits that it could bring.

‘Automating out’ routine work can have a significant impact on cost where there is the scale to support the investment. Routine laboratory work takes scientists away from research thinking and potentially is a turn-off to those considering a career in laboratories. However, this is not a simple path. It requires a change in the skill sets required in laboratories: scientists who develop skills in equipment engineering and coding or hardware and software engineers who develop skills in science. The current education system does not produce cross-fertilised disciplines (although skills like coding are becoming more endemic in the cohorts entering the workforce today).

Perhaps a more pressing problem is the fact that the new workforce of the 2020s is not keen to travel into an office or laboratory to work, preferring working remotely.

For research work and smaller more specialized laboratories, the automation story is different. Without the scale, the investment in robotized systems against simple improvements in efficiency does not add up. The released value of scientists being freed up to spend more time analyzing, discussing, collaborating, and thinking is not well quantified. Islands of automation may be seen as investable to allow new science.

Added to this there is not a joined-up ecosystem that looks at today’s small-scale testing as tomorrow’s large-scale roll-out, meaning that testing protocols are often developed in ways that inhibit or slow future automation.

Change, Adaptation and Flexibility in Lab Design

A combination of emerging factors drive change in the activities and operations in a laboratory function.

In research laboratories, the work and team can change rapidly as new discoveries are made, equipment and technologies change, and there is the need to reduce or cease some operations while others are expanded.

The people and skills change and there are changes in social and environmental demands. This uncertainty drives a need for a combination of flexibility and adaptability.

The laboratory estate needs to be adaptable to be expanded, contracted, and/or repurposed without significant planning issues, cost, time and impact to ongoing operations. The spaces within the estate need to allow for flexibility in the location of people, processes and equipment, with changes, wherever possible, carried out without the need for engineering and construction. Finding the right balance is a critical factor.

Almost universal among participants in the discussion, was a concern about the sheer amount of data now generated in laboratories. This is one of the key drivers for smart systems, as the level of data already outstretches the human capability to examine, analyze, and make sense of it.

Smart systems can provide a mechanism to inform decision-making, but the sheer quantity and flow rate of new data also create practical problems. Due to the data flow rate and a perceived lack of secure systems and protocols, WiFi is not used for laboratory instruments. The need for wired ethernet and the development of CAT standards is driving larger service voids (bigger, more expensive lab buildings) which in turn restricts flexibility and adaptability.

The data issue is another factor impacting the skill sets required in the laboratory.

Although the automation path forward for laboratories is uncertain, it was felt that longer-term plans and strategies were needed.

For example, if automated systems become prevalent, they become increasingly critical to operations and supply chains. This brings with it a need for increased reliability, redundancy, and contingencies.

There is a paradox; what does long-term planning look like when there is little clarity on how individual technologies will deliver or develop? How do we demonstrate clear business cases for investment when many approaches are not yet ready for deployment and those that are ready have not been tried and tested?

There is also a significant cultural change to work through as activities that were previously seen as high-value, almost crafts, become commodity services.

There is clarity in the fact that changes in equipment and technology will have significant impact on buildings, structural loading, vibration control, floor-to-floor heights, and special layout.

Less quantifiable is how buildings will need to change to support the change in the people operations of scientists, engineers, technicians, and managers. Laboratories can be sited in warehouse or industrial zones which could serve the need of building adaptability very well.

However, will these locations help attract the minds and skills required to create value and manage the transition?

A Business Case for Shared Laboratory Space

An interesting subject was discussed around the business case or affordability of automated testing.

As in the other areas, could common operations or key equipment in laboratories be shared? This model is adopted in other arenas where equipment is simply too expensive for one party to own and operate but can be provided as a service or on a rental basis. Although at a conceptual level, this was thought to be a good idea, there are several issues to overcome. Location, IP and, interestingly, tribalism. The fierce independence and competitiveness of laboratory operations is an antagonist to sharing and cooperation.

Sustainable, Future Labs Spaces

The sustainability of laboratories was high on the agenda. There was a tacit understanding that designers and engineers needed to sort out the buildings and services and that operations managers would work on what goes on inside the buildings. This may be another representation of tribalism.

The premise of the event itself was based on the understanding that only through working together would the way forward be mapped out. The vital role of design to foster collaboration across the sector, and outside it, was universally accepted.

In the room were those who have taken sustainability as a central pillar of their business. It was interesting to discover that, as a relative new business, they found many ways to make their laboratories more sustainable today than was ever thought possible, especially in terms of recycling waste. This information will be shared more fully with the workshop participants.

There are two very interesting impacts from such a strong sustainability drive:

Firstly, the very practical impact of the space required to treat, segregate, store, and move materials for recycling. Secondly, the expectations of the new cohorts of the workforce. Those entering the workforce in the 2020s expect and demand that these commitments and activities are going on and this influences who they want to work for.

Skills shortages were mentioned in the pre-event survey completed by participants. Although not discussed in great detail, a number of key points were made about recruitment. Universities organized into traditional silos are not providing the skills required for the change ahead such as scientists with coding and equipment knowledge, or engineers with scientific understanding. All of us are also guilty of not extoling the value of laboratories and the research and testing that goes on in them.

Without this promotion, potential employees are left with the bench and white coat view. And what are we all doing to make laboratories great places to work?

The group that came together were energetic, thoughtful, inspiring and thought-provoking. As representatives of those thousands who work in and around laboratories, they demonstrated the wealth of talent, skill and energy present in this eco-system. A system that is at the forefront and front line of the health, well-being and opportunities of our society, both today and tomorrow.

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