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with the technologies that we have at the moment,’ commented Lynch. ‘In a way I think you have to decompose the laboratory a bit in terms of the different challenges’ he added. One example of the challenges facing


lab users is instrument interoperability. Pistoia aims to tackle this in multiple ways, with one of the main areas of the LotF project looking at analytical methods. ‘When one is running an analytical method – in life sciences, food or any other lab – you have the abstract method but as soon as you apply that to an instrument you need to turn it into a functional method for a particular instrument,’ noted Lynch. ‘The intention is to represent both sides of that method so you can share a method between different instruments and labs such that is much more interoperable. It is hoped that this will appeal to many users – both those that are working in the laboratory because it is a day-to-day challenge but also the consumers of that experiment, because they feel more reassured about the reproducibility. This is because the method is much better defined and allows the method to move between labs or organisations,’ said Lynch. Another focus area for the project is the


laboratory workflow. At the recent Pistoia alliance conference, held in the UK, the organiser featured a two-day hackathon to see how these issues might be solved using technology that is already available ‘The hackathon was looking at examples


of how voice controlled lab might look in the future. This is a bit “future looking” but actually taking the practical devices like Alexa and Google Home and seeing what they can do around the lab environment’ said Lynch. ‘One of the reasons for trying the hack


days is to look at what boundaries we should set for those types of devices and to learn from those vocabularies that we use without voice devices, because that will be a challenge for a noisy lab or when something goes off the rails,’ Lynch added. Lynch noted that the diverse membership of the Pistoia Alliance helps to generate a wide variety of ideas and use cases. This community is what drives projects like LotF. ‘First of all it is about gathering ideas, allowing people to present their challenges and where they think the technology is heading,’ said Lynch. ‘We are lucky to have that community and then we can start to position projects that have enough momentum and interest from the community. This is where the methods project came from; many people thought it was really important,


22 Scientific Computing World June/July 2018


relatively doable with the knowledge and technology that is available today. That allows us to take a community idea and develop it into a fully-fledged project,’ added Lynch.


This is one of the key defining features of the Pistoia Alliance. It is based on a community that can take ideas through its complete lifecycle, adding input form a wide variety of lab users across many industries. Lynch mentioned that even users from


different types of labs or industries help to generate momentum: ‘Even things that are slightly left-field around usability – we


Pistoia took last year to come up with these strategic themes LotF, AI and real world data and fair data. As long as those strategic themes are still relevant then we will continue to hopefully have other spin-off projects that are generated by the broader community,’ said Lynch.


”Pistoia has recently adopted this notion of designing projects around central themes”


expect the lab to work better for us; as a scientist we hope that those people can become more efficient than they are today.’ ‘It is constantly cycling round, so the


community is the underpinning part and out of that comes projects. We would say that if we are continuing to create new projects then it [LotF] would continue as long as there was enough momentum and energy in the community that could come up with these new ideas or implement them into the lab environment.


Strategic themes Pistoia has recently adopted this notion of designing projects around central themes that can help to drive more interest and momentum through shared goals and ideas. The LotF, for example, is a myriad of different projects within a single theme. There are a number of ideas which are being carried out today, such as methods and usability studies and the use of mobile technology. This will build into more technologically advanced research as the technology becomes available and there is still a drive from the Pistoia community. ‘We felt that was a step change that


Achieving progress While the LotF project will eventually look at precision medicine, quantum computing and other long-term goals, there are still many things that can be worked on today. One example of this is predictive maintenance, which could help to reduce the failure of lab components through the application of AI. ‘For predictive maintenance we are looking at how that could work because it is a funny thing with maintenance data that you need a lot of data to be able to predict. We are looking at various threads to see how we can bring together enough data to make it useful, and that is also where we hope merge the LotF project with our AI threads – we are hoping to get some really nice synergy there. One group could create the data using emerging IoT devices, and then the other side of it would start to use and mine that data to look at whether one could build a predictive model from – let’s say – refrigerator data or other similar equipment,’ said Lynch. ‘We are still in the analysis of that to


determine what will it take and who do we need to bring on board, and how do we call the community to arms in order to generate that data,’ added Lynch. The eventual results of this LotF


initiative could help to drive precision medicine, AI and other novel computing technologies into the lab, but there is still some way to go before this will become a reality. ‘There are some really great approaches to precision medicine. We certainly want to support them in what they are doing, and we see that these projects and strategic themes are contributing to the evolution of precision medicine,’ said Lynch. ‘Precision medicine is part of that


journey but obviously other people will need to support it. Precision medicine requires that real world data to really be effective. ‘Another one of our projects is looking at clinical diagnostics; that is another part of the delivery mechanism of precision medicine that can be supported through clinical diagnostics research. We see not just these things that we have talked about, but a number of our other projects, contributing to a much more mature and effective laboratory environment,’ concluded Lynch.


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