Rizwan Chaudhrey interview with Isabel Muñoz Willery

While the first Paperless Lab Academy^® in India is about to get launched by December 1-3, 2020, Rizwan Chaudhrey at RSK Solutions discusses about the future of paperless labs with  Isabel Muñoz Willery Ph.D,  founder  and Co-Owner at NL42 Consulting and Organiser of the Paperless Lab Academy^® 

The market today offers multiple solutions for the laboratories whether they dedicate to basic research, new molecules discovery or operate under GMP regulations as quality control in a manufacturing company.

The technology have evolved in such way that concepts like connectivity and integrity hold hands, archiving and search tools get aligned, cloud and security are assumed. Definitely all those concepts and topics are constantly covered during the PLA editions and within the webinars program offered along the year, constantly balancing back and forth from basic introduction to technical training and visionary presentation from through leaders.

At the #PLA2020India, companies like Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech, SGS, Ipca Laboratories, Zydus Cadila are sharing their own digital journey and strategy, explaining where they’ve starting from. Yet additionally pragmatic presentation from experts in chromatography and data integrity are providing great learning oppportunities  and finally, from Bigfinite and Dow Chemicals, the conversation goes one more step, to artificial intelligence and how to use specific algorithms for better process control.

When asked about the future of the labs and the reality of paperless laboratories, Isabel Muñoz-Willery mentioned that technically, the solutions available today are more than capable to provide answers to the lab managers and to facilitate easy access to data insights for better business decision making. However the human factor remains one of the most important factor for a successful digital transformation project.

Effect of the pandemic situation 

Fact is that the pandemic situation has forced the companies to address the needs for their employees to work remotely when possible. The need to eliminate every single manual step has reinforced the message that systems integrations, review by default facilitated by properly configured systems, remote access to final results for secured remote manager approvals are critical to for those companies to remain operative and above all competitive. The pandemic situation effect, like a selection process, has highlighted the companies that were ready to react.

It is to expect that CEO and CFOs  that were not yet considering  a priority the proper management of their scientific data , will now budget for digitalisation projects.

The future of paperless laboratories might be brighter than ever. Everyone has understood the relevance of laboratories and their critical contribution to the actual situation. Everyone has understood that laboratories are of vital necessity  for testing people, for investigating and developing new drugs and vaccines, for controlling the correct manufacturing of the final products and their components.

The light is now focused to what some top managers were used to call the “black box”.