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Kill the Green Folder

A product recall case study or why it pays to digitize

Cutting Warehouse Waste by 50%

Preventing Costly Batch Failures with AI-Driven Insights

Raffle and Survey

Top 10 Trends from SQA’s 40th Annual Meeting

What’s in Your Warehouse

In our previous post, we delved into the significance of an integrated inventory system and its potential benefits for biotech companies. Today, let’s take a step further and demystify the term “integrated inventory.” We will uncover what this system entails, how it differs from point solutions or conventional Excel-based methods, and why it is a game-changer in managing your inventory.

Inventory Wake-Up Call: Biotech’s Neglected Cornerstone

During the heyday of the genomics revolution, we had the good fortune to be part of Human Genome Sciences’ gene discovery department. Our challenge was to analyze human samples from all parts of the anatomy, stages of development, and states of disease to find genes being differentially expressed. When an interesting gene was discovered, we needed to find the specific sample in the freezer from which that sequence fragment was derived. Once acquired, our team would begin elucidating the entire gene sequence using a “primer walk” technique. Our success rate, an astonishingly high 98%, hinged on finding the right sample. From this, we learned firsthand the importance of establishing a reliable materials inventory on which to anchor scientific operations.

Interoperability: The Key to Increased Efficiency

Businesses create value by transforming raw materials into finished goods and selling them for a profit. There is an internal “supply-chain” that unfolds horizontally across most businesses with handoffs occurring between functions. For instance, one can envision a series of handoffs from purchasing, to receiving, to engineering, to manufacturing, to packaging, and finally to shipping.
Over dozens of informatics projects and several decades, we have found that these “functional handoffs” are a source of considerable friction within many businesses.

Post Deployment Services – Validation, Training, and SOPs

Are you considering a new IT system for process development, analytical testing, manufacturing, or clinical sample management? Consider the ways that BioIT can help you during the later stages of system integration. Move forward confidently and efficiently with our selection of services for this critical time.

The Paradoxes of Computer System Validation

Life Science companies who use computer systems to support regulated activities are compelled to perform computer system validation (CSV). CSV is valuable because it insists that you evaluate system performance against requirements and ensure regulatory fitness. But CSV is not an easy process. You must list requirements, perform risk assessments, and generate and execute test scripts to demonstrate compliance.

BioIT to Sponsor BioBuzz January 2020 Event

The Oyster, the Grain of Sand, and the Pearl

By Bob Beliveau.  Adverse conditions can sometimes produce remarkable results.  Take the Oyster for example.  When a grain of sand gets into its shell, it secretes a shell like substance (nacre) to coat the intruder.  Over time, this process results in the formation of a Pearl, one of the World’s most treasured jewels. The same […]

Your Lab Doesn’t Need a LIMS

By Bob Beliveau. Many labs begin operations by capturing data in spreadsheets. Excel is ubiquitous and versatile, and the ability to add new columns to capture unforeseen data is a plus. Furthermore, instrument vendors provide spreadsheet export capabilities that make Excel data exchanges natural. As data volume grows and the lab processes mature, it becomes […]

Five Signs you are Mismanaging your Data

By Bob Beliveau. If you are in the Life Sciences industry, your data is your product. And your ability to find, share, and make decisions based on data is the key to your productivity. But we continue to see telltale signs that scientific data is being mismanaged. Here are a few things we look for […]

Pony Up – We Need Your Best People

By Bob Beliveau. In a former position, I used to lead an IT group. One of my duties was to meet with “the business” and discuss potential IT projects. A key message during these discussions was the need to devote resources to the project if it was going to be successful. We’d ask the business […]

Getting your Automation Projects off the Ground – Just do it!

By Bob Beliveau. At BioIT Solutions, one of our core principles is to learn from experience. Rather than initially building a large, comprehensive system, we counsel our customers to carve out a modest set of capabilities and get the system operational quickly. Once the system is in production, we often find that our pre-implementation concepts […]

IT – It’s a People Business

By Bob Beliveau. It’s not easy building and launching successful IT systems.  You must have a firm grasp of technology.  You must understand a customer’s business well enough to know where a system can add value.  But you must also understand the people in an organization and how the project should be rolled out and […]

Clinical Diagnostics: An Internet Business?

By Mike Fannon.  Personalized medicine promises to deliver treatments tailored to an individual and their specific disease characteristics.  The approach represents a big leap in the practice of medicine and can result in more effective and lower cost prevention and treatment.  A prerequisite to achieving the aspirations of personalized medicine is a new class of […]

Don’t Drive Your Process with Email

By Bob Beliveau. I’m going to level with you.  I’m not a big fan of driving processes with Email.  Oh sure, Email does have its place.  When I order a new gadget on Amazon, I like to get that Email confirmation.  And it’s cool to track your order via FedEx as it makes its way […]

It’s the Data, Dummy …

By Bob Beliveau. Decades ago, when I entered the industry, I joined a department called Data Systems. Many of my wet-behind-the-ears colleagues worked at other companies in their Management Information Systems (MIS) departments. We learned how to make the big iron mainframes crunch numbers and deliver reports to the line units. Sometime later, (the 1990s […]

Moving to the Cloud

By Bob Beliveau. We’ve reached a tipping point where companies are comfortable moving their systems to the cloud. The cost savings, combined with the speed of implementation now outweigh concerns about hosting systems offsite. But internet based systems offer opportunities for collaboration that traditional packaged systems cannot capitalize on.

Learning from Experience

By Mike Fannon. During my long tenure with Human Genome Sciences (from late 1992 through 2005), I had the good fortune to participate in a biotech startup from the ground floor.  It was a real learning experience to work for an entrepreneurial company staking a claim on the genomic frontier in the mid 1990s.

The Best of Both: Custom versus Packaged IT Solutions

By Bob Beliveau. Part of any IT project is the build-buy decision. Are the system requirements unique enough to merit a custom solution, or can they be satisfied with a package product and a bit of configuration? Is the business process being automated a core, differentiating process, or is it a “back office” process such […]

Biotechnology Avalanche of Data

By Jeff Schumack. Our professional services clients are demanding timely and accurate access to actionable information distilled from the avalanche of data generated by instruments, experiments, reports and management procedures. The widespread use of automated instrumentation and analytical tools introduces the need for effective, flexible and scalable data management approaches. Instrument data and sophisticated analysis […]