Pathology in life sciences research and development (R&D) can be heavy on collaboration. That’s a good thing – because science is a team effort. But as you engage more stakeholders, lab professionals, outside partners, and compliance authorities, it’s easy to get bogged down in complex processes and workflows. This can put the brakes on efficiency and productivity.
It doesn’t help that you’re also under pressure to help accelerate the flow of R&D. And, yes, this means exactly what it sounds like: increasing lab throughput.
Obstacles On The Road
But what exactly stands in the way of higher lab throughput? Let’s start with data. How often are lab operations put on hold until the right datasets get transmitted from project partners and collaborators? How much time do your scientists and pathologists spend manually inputting data before getting to the actual analysis? Talk about putting the brakes on efficiency and productivity.
In other respects, the obstacles have more to do with software capabilities. One critical component is collaboration itself. Take for instance, the slide review process. Pathologists could certainly do more – and do it faster – if they didn’t have to struggle with systems that are sluggish, hard to access, less than user-friendly, and lack the tools for efficient primary and peer review.
The same is true for lab scientists. When scientists are analyzing images that contain quality artifacts, this can bring a project to a halt as they wait for them to be rescanned. So, let’s add quality control to the list of obstacles hampering increased throughput.
A Platform For Better, Faster R&D
Here at Proscia, we speak to R&D pathologists and lab scientists all the time – so we know all about these challenges. This is why we’ve built Concentriq for Research to help your lab keep the pedal to metal rather than putting the brakes on productivity.
Concentriq for Research digitizes data capture, workflows, and handoffs so scientists can simplify, standardize, and seamlessly share data across and beyond the organization.
With a single click, you can deliver terabytes of rich image and study data to internal teams and external partners, like peer reviewers and CROs. And to accelerate review times, the platform facilitates live collaboration sessions, giving reviewers the tools needed to evaluate whole slide images (WSIs) quickly and effectively.
Capturing data is easy, too. Our platform automates data capture from spreadsheets, image analysis applications, and LIMS. This frees your pathologists and scientists from data-input duties in favor of higher-level work. Automated image ingestion from scanners puts WSIs in front of your pathologists without the need for manual uploads. And, critically, Concentriq for Research uses standardized templates to help you capture, structure, manage, and work with the image metadata that is so important for study success.
And let’s not forget the lab scientists who get a boost from Automated QC – a seamlessly embedded application that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automate image quality control. By detecting and segmenting images with quality, this application eliminates an otherwise manual, time-consuming task – saving time for your team and ensuring that scientists get the high-quality data that they need.
What Does AI-ready Mean?
Automated QC is just one example of AI at work with Concentriq for Research, a platform we like to describe as AI-ready. But what does this mean? It means that Concentriq for Research is designed to incorporate a broad portfolio of applications so that R&D teams can realize the full promise AI – whether for driving efficiency and productivity gains or unlocking new insights. And we make that possible with a “YOT” (yours, ours, and theirs) model:
- Yours: Use our platform tools to build your own AI. In fact, half of our life sciences customers are leveraging our developer tools to build custom applications, including AI, and deploying them on Concentriq for Research to advance their R&D.
- Ours: Our built-in Automated QC is a great example.
- Theirs: The platform’s open API makes it easy to integrate with third-party AI solutions like the image analysis applications from our partner Visiopharm.
With a foundation of meticulous image and metadata management, the Concentriq for Research platform is designed to help you take advantage of AI – YOT – in whatever form makes sense for your R&D efforts. Together with our customers, we’re helping to transform R&D pathology to meet the ever-increasing research demands in life sciences today.
