Cloud Labs + AI : The New Digital Workflow

Helping Accelerate Scientific Progress Like Never Before
The convergence of highly automated cloud labs and AI represents a new frontier in modern research and will dramatically accelerate scientific innovation by helping researchers maximize the potential of their work. The synergy created by a new digital workflow where researchers utilize a single computer interface to design, run and analyze experiments in cloud lab environments with the aid of large language models will allow researchers to spend more time developing novel approaches to experiment design and analyzing results, and less time on manual, time-intensive tasks in the lab. The new digital workflow will serve as the ultimate research companion for today’s modern scientists, and the impact of this transition will be powerful by helping reduce the time it takes to develop new medicines and decrease the costs of developing new drugs.

Laboratory Startup Costs: Incubator vs Cloud Lab

What does it cost to get started?
The ECL provides significant value over the path of performing experiments through a mix of outsourcing and incubator benches / shared equipment on a per experiment basis, lowering barriers to entry by reducing operating costs, requiring no capital purchases and enabling startups to get experiments running in under a week.

Hidden Costs of Outsourcing

“CROs aren’t running your methods, they are running their interpretation of your methods.”
This comment, made to me by an accelerator group, rings true for many of us who have partnered with CROs. This observation might seem benign on its face — after all, why shouldn’t a CRO bring their experience to your methods? However, in reflecting on my previous experiences working with CROs, where I spent a lot of time managing relationships, strategy, and tactics, and became well acquainted with the benefits, challenges, and costs of those relationships, I’ve come to realize that third party interpretation of your methods lies at the heart of the many hidden costs associated with CROs. At first blush, these relationships look very straightforward: scope project, transfer materials, receive requested data/materials, rinse and repeat. However, these interactions are much more complicated (and expensive) than they may appear when you take a more complete and holistic look at the process. 

No Shortcuts to the Lab of the Future

Building a life science cloud lab to free your science from the lab
There are many hidden assumptions in the design and operation of lab environments today that are based on constraints encountered while conducting research decades ago. This is despite the relatively common availability of technology and tools (cloud computing, software engineering, informatics theory, lab automation, robotics and industrial operations practices) that could be employed to deliver a dramatically faster, more reliable, more reproducible, and, ultimately, more cost effective lab. 

Founding ECL

Our co-founders talk about building a remote controlled cloud lab
Listen to our co-founders talk about their background, early days of co-founding a company, and what ECL is doing today with John Conway on his vodcast, Rockstars of R&D.