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.
McKinsey and Company recently conducted a study that found highly automated labs can help bring medicines to the market 500 days faster while also reducing development costs by 25 percent due to superior laboratory orchestration, robotics, liquid handling, and data analytics resulting in shorter cycle times, higher throughput, better reproducibility, and more predictability.
Cloud labs offer researchers tremendous advantages such as access to state-of-the-art labs from anywhere on earth 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and the ability to run multiple experiments in parallel in an environment where every protocol is tracked, and indexed with precision, making reproducibility as easy as pushing a button. These benefits are further enhanced with the addition of LLM plugins which can serve as AI assistants to help researchers turn their ideas into real experiments first within a simulated environment before advancing to running the experiment in the real world. Cloud labs and AI assistants also provide powerful analytical tools to help researchers analyze enormous amounts of data that comes from the ability to run a massive number of experiments.
This new digital workflow will help accelerate scientific progress, democratize access to scientific resources, and enhance interdisciplinary collaboration like never before.
