laboratory informatics ➤
is particularly troublesome if proprietary data formats are involved. ‘Sometimes you may limit the new system
to try and accommodate the new data and that is a pitfall that you can get trapped in, and then you are not getting the full value out of your new system to try make compromises to support the old data,’ says Ingalls. ‘Tere are definitely some tough decisions to be made about why you want to move all your legacy data into that new database model – I would say that there needs to be some pretty strong factors to want to get into that.’ Data migration can be troubling to
organisations, particularly if they are using instrumentation with proprietary data formats or particularly old legacy systems that can make it more troublesome to port data across to the new system. In these cases, it is a case of deciding how
much of this data needs to be recovered and stored. Some companies want to store everything, but den Boer stresses that this is not always the right choice – if the laboratory is moving into new methods and processes, then not all data may be necessary. ‘Data is one of the other challenges,’ says den Boer. ‘What data do you really want to port over? Do you want to do data cleansing as part of this exercise?’’
Radical change? However, upgrading legacy systems is not just a case of throwing out the old and getting the shiniest new technologies. As Core Informatics’ Uzzo explains, it is an opportunity to radically change the functionality and efficiency of the laboratory by adopting new methods to conduct research: ‘As businesses shiſt from small molecules to biologics therapy, as they are increasingly looking to leverage next generation sequencing (NGS) technology or CRISPR cas9 workflows. No organisation, even large pharma, possesses the requisite capabilities to develop these modalities and bring them to market.’ Uzzo highlights the pharmaceutical
companies as one industry in particular that is experiencing considerable change. ‘Pharma Workflows have entirely changed over the course of the last five to 10 years,’ says Uzzo. ‘Tese businesses have the choice of continuing to invest in custom code for legacy client server products which only run on their networks or they can use this as an opportunity to evolve to a modern informatics platform, in the cloud, that has the flexibility to suit any and all of their laboratory workflows.’ In addition to new modalities and research
6 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD
methods, pharma companies have also experienced change in externalisation and outsourcing of drug development processes. Tis provides an excellent opportunity to adopt cloud-based technologies which can further bolster a company’s capability for collaboration with external partners. Core provides three methods to deploy its
informatics soſtware; a public, multi-tenant environment; hosted private installations using Amazon Web Services (AWS); traditional model of deploying servers on premise within a client’s facilities. While around one third of their customers use each deployment method, the AWS model was growing rapidly year-on-year. ‘Every year the proportion of our
customers running in AWS increases, we expect it to be well over 80 per cent by the
THE LAB HAS MOVED ON BUT THE SYSTEM HAS NOT MOVED ON AND MOVED WITH IT
next year,’ states Uzzo. ‘Te vast majority of new customers that join Core are going straight into the cloud. Tey are first motivated by changes in the laboratory, but are evaluating new informatics systems they are using that as an opportunity to switch to vendors that have the most mature cloud competency. Pharmaceutical increasing their adoption of externalised research partners, which makes a cloud-based system even more important to adequately share and exchange information with these collaborators,’ adds Uzzo.
Many of these new cloud customers
want to take advantage of cloud-based systems to facilitate the sharing of data with both internal and external collaborators. Termo Fisher also reported a large increase in collaborative approaches for drug development. ‘Collaboration is definitely something that
we have seen over the last ten years with the disaggregation of pharma and outsourcing to CROs and CMOs and strategic partnerships towards external organisations,’ says Meek. ‘Sharing that data outside of your four walls is more important than before.’ ‘We are seeing a lot of customers looking
at how they can get the most out of their data and that has really changed the way they look at the laboratory and subsequently the way they look at the laboratory systems that manage that process,’ states Meek. Upgrading legacy systems require an
understanding change but, if handled correctly it not only provides an opportunity to adopt the latest infrastructure but it can provide added flexibility, performance and functionality. Uzzo explaines that this is particularly
true for companies using data intensive technologies such as NGS because cloud- based systems can be used to provide additional resources on-demand: ‘Customers running within our infrastructure can burst into available compute capacity, as loads dictate. Once that workload diminishes those application resources are automatically de- provisioned so that users are only paying for what they needed.’ He concludes: ‘Ultimately, this means that
they do not have to worry about deploying and managing that infrastructure.’l
@scwmagazine l
www.scientific-computing.com
Lightspring/
Shuterstock.com
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