The stereotype of scientists walking around labs with notebooks and fastidiously taking hand notes, is amazingly, not far from the truth.
Antipodes Scientific’s Managing Director, Daniel Fitzpatrick, who has a doctorate from the University of Cambridge, has been through the ropes himself.
Which is why he and Antipodes Scientific are building tools to help address challenges they faced as researchers themselves. All members of the team have a background in lab-based research.
Now, Antipodes Scientific is about to launch a product that has the ability to completely transform research. Catapulting researchers from pen and paper and mountains of unsearchable binders, to a fully searchable, pre-populating electronic lab notebook, that meets the chemical industry’s stringent health and safety requirements.
“It means that researchers can spend less time on day-to-day monotony of routine tasks and have more time to do productive work,” says Daniel.
A big component of the transformation is that scientists will have access to research records electronically, including chemical transformations, which will accelerate discovery processes, especially in the pharmaceutical sector.
So why have researchers been stuck in the dark ages?
Partly, Daniel says, the industry is slow to adopt new technology because of the regulatory environment in which they operate. If they do things as they always have, regulators like the FDA are familiar with their procedures. But, if something new is introduced it might trigger a long review process, impacting time to market. It’s always been seen as easier just to carry a book around.
“I do find it mind boggling,” says Daniel. “I’ve got a great photo of the storage area at the university where I did post grad. We would write our results in thick books of 200 pages, and there’s basement full of thousands of these books, that need to be kept for 40 years by law.
“When someone moves on, their books go into the basement and no-one knows where they are. You lose past knowledge – no-one’s going to spend hours searching through them.”
The electronic lab notebook will be released publicly next month to time with the post summer holidays of the US and Europe, where Antipodes Scientific does a lot of business.
“We’ve got existing customers trialling, and word has spread to other companies, so there’s growing interest to get it up and running,” Daniel says.
Transformational indeed. If you recognise Daniel working from his desk on level one, it’s highly unlikely you will see much paper!