Pumps, Valves & Liquid Handling
Can Electronic Hand Held Pipetting Cross the Chasm? What Does History Tell Us?
Gary Nelson, Integra Biosciences
If you are using a pipette today and you are asked one or more of these questions about electronic pipettes: Do you have Electronic Pipette in your lab? Do you own an electronic pipette? Do you use an electronic pipette? What do you think the majority of scientists would answer? Probably “No, because I tried it years ago and found it to be…Too expensive, Too hard to use, Too fancy, Too big!”
Any of these answers would have worked 25 years ago or maybe even 10 years ago the answers would have been understandable... but it’s hard to imagine today, right?
To start, many people in the scientifi c community today were not even around when electronic pipettes with functionality similar to what we know today were introduced to scientifi c laboratories. In truth it started around 1986 when Matrix Technologies in Lowell, MA and Rainin Instruments in Northern California invented a microprocessor controlled pipette. Matrix, a start-up and Rainin, a well-established leader in manual pipetting, both spoke of the virtues offered when a piston is driven by a motor and not the human thumb. Repetitive motion injuries could be nearly eliminated; accuracy and precision would be improved because each plunger movement was reproducible. Both again warned the
scientist of the RSI that resulted from turning the dials to adjust the volume of the manual pipettes and not directly entering the volume on a key pad; and, fi nally, both went on about the many application and productivity gains that could easily be accomplished with the programmability of the pipette. Fortunately for Matrix and Rainin these were true benefi ts, but only moderate sales success was accomplished because the issues of ‘too big’, ‘too expensive’, and ‘too hard to use’ were also true. Technology needed to catch up with innovation. While the two Pioneering companies, Matrix and Rainin, were investing heavily in R+D to improve their fi rst generation products, a third company, Biohit, in Helsinki, Finland introduced a competitive product in 1990 that overcame at least the size objection…it was smaller than the Matrix or Rainin offerings. Even with ergonomists singing their praises and the three companies continuing to improve their products, the early adopters were still the only market for electronic pipettes.
The next eight to ten years of market growth was dominated by the early adopters. Although OEM agreements had been reached by Biohit with Eppendorf and innovations in productivity had been accomplished by Biohit and Matrix with larger volume pipette; Matrix’s expanding tip pipette for reformatting and sampling more than one channel at a time; and Rainin’s introduction of a simpler, less featured model to shorten the users learning curve, problems existed with reliability, size and ease of use.
Then in 1999 three events happened that may have moved the market into the next segment of market acceptance. First, Eppendorf, after sitting on the sidelines for over a decade without a proprietary offering, fi nally introduced their Research Pro line, which took a nice step toward improving the comfort and ease of use for the scientist. Next, that same year, the fi rst acquisition of an electronic pipette Company was completed when Matrix Technologies was acquired by Sybron Laboratory Products. Finally, another new company, Vista Labs in Brewster, NY introduced their ergonomically friendly Ovation pipettes. In retrospect that fl urry of industry action in 1999 was the fi rst real move to cross the product life cycle chasm and gain majority acceptance. Additional signs of crossing showed up in the next 7 years when two new companies got involved and for the fi rst time Asia joined The United States and Europe with product alternatives.
Existing companies continued to expand and improved their offerings through the early years of the new millennium, but it wasn’t until 2006 that electronic pipette manufacturers really believed they answered the balance of those nagging questions from the 80’s by dividing the crossing into two mainstream users - those that needed a simple minimum function motor driven pipette and those that wanted to get it all, standardised SOP’s, RSI relief, and productivity.
The fi rst to respond to the question, ‘Is “bigger and more functions” really better?’ was Matrix (now Thermo Fisher) when they introduced their voice controlled Hybrid pipette with less functionality. Then, Gilson’s produced the ‘Pipetman M’ and more recently Sartorius (formerly BioHit) introduced their ‘Picus’ pipette with a more simplifi ed approach.
Circa 2007, the 3rd or 4th (I’m not really sure) generation pipettes from the 1980’s concept began to enter the market and technology fi nally catches up with innovation when the electronic pipette world met the consumer electronics world. The fi rst of this new generation pipette was introduced by Viafl o Corporation (founded in 2005 and now Integra-Biosciences). The Viafl o pipettes featured the fi rst four color display without instructional limitations and a touch wheel similar to what is used in
the music industry to access user preferences. Bluetooth connectivity could also be added for growing lab management needs. The full line of Integra pipettes included the standard single and multichannel pipette. The ‘Voyager’ pipette, with the fi rst motor driven variable spaced tip for productivity gains in sample addition and gel loading, opened the doors for today’s fully functional consumer initiated user interfaces by Thermo Fisher’s ‘Novus’, Eppendorf’s ‘Xplorer’, and fi nally Mettler Toledo’s ‘E4 XLS’.
Novus
Xplorer
E4 XLS
In an effort to take electronic handheld pipettes completely across the chasm from innovative early adopters to main stream pipetting, Integra Bioscience has recently introduced the most productive handheld pipette to date when in January of 2013 they introduced ‘Viafl o 96/384’. Will this latest generation of pipettes be what it takes to fully address the issues of the 80’s or is there still something new needed?
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96
