High Throughput Technologies and Key Benefits

High Throughput Technologies (HTTs) refer to rather experimental (in the sense that they are not widely practiced) methods and tools to quickly obtain and attain data as well as to improve the R&D productivity. Some laboratories and clinics might already be using one or two of these tools without them realizing it. For example, they might already be automating their laboratories, Next Generation Sequencing for DNA or using advanced data analysis and visualization. Other tools include parallelization of experimental data, RCP or rapid continuous processing and the effective design of experiments.

Combining HTTs

From being confined in the pharmaceutics, due to the exacting demands of the industry, HTTs have since crossed over to the other industries to improve research and testing cycles. While there might be some gains to adopting one or two tools under high throughput technologies, the laboratory can maximize results by amalgamating them into one integrated ecosystem.

Changing mindsets

One of the misconceptions about HTT is that it’s going to eat up much of your resources. The fact is it’s more about changing your own mindset to be open to new ideas, even if they are way outside your comfort zone, if it means improving productivity and results.

Clinical and research laboratories today face intense pressure to address rising costs, decreasing number of skilled staff and intense competition brought about by the global economy. But they can only survive and even thrive through innovation. Investing in high throughput technologies might seem a luxury for some companies but they are the only way to gain an edge over the competition.

Some benefits

There are some obvious benefits to adopting high throughput technologies for your organization.

- You continually develop and innovate products, which will benefit your clients
- You provide value adding to existing products
- Build your brand as a trailblazer

The laboratory is an important cog in the patient recovery lifecycle

Clinical diagnosis is affirmed by results and that means if your laboratory technology is not up to par, you could be dispensing wrong information that could be critical to the treatment of the patient.   One of the most common problems in relation to the manual lab setting is traceability. Putting the responsibility on the workers not to make a mistake would be asking too much from them.

Laboratory information management system

The laboratory information management system automates your lab to enhance service. The technology is aimed at reducing, if not eliminating, human error in the whole mix. Now, there’s no system in the world that can guarantee error-free results. The difference when you adopt laboratory informatics is that you trace the whole procedure to determine where you went wrong. From there, rectifying the error can be quite easy.

Saving on costs

Automating the laboratory technology will actually allow you to save on costs. Equipping your workplace with a lot of lab technologists for menial work will be doing them a disservice. For example, data mining is rigorous work that can use up most of the time of the lab technologist who can better spend his efforts on improving patient care and delivering accurate results.

Just an example, using bar codes immediately results to less data entry errors. It also allows the laboratory to handle and management huge amount of data. The more your laboratory technology is automated, the better for your organization to handle the rigors of growing customer base and demands.

Making things easier

The ultimate aim of laboratory informatics is to make the jobs of your workers and employees easier. When they are less stressed because of too much workload, patient care suffers. It must be stressed, however, that technology is only meant to enhance service. Personnel skills play a larger part in delivering high-quality patient care.

What are Next Generation Sequencing and High Throughput Screening

One of the most important scientific breakthroughs of our age is that of the method to decipher DNA sequences. All branches of biological research can greatly benefit from the ability to read genetic information from biological systems. Sanger sequencing was the method adopted in laboratories around the world, but it has several limitations in scalability, resolution, throughput and speed. Next Generation Sequencing is what offers solutions to overcome these limitations. This new method extends the process used earlier across several millions of reactions in parallel. This is essential what offers a faster way to read the data.

The data output offered by NGS has increased to a great extent, more than doubling each year. he older technology required around 10 years in order to sequence a single human genome but with high throughput screening, scientists can sequence five genomes in one single run and can produce data in just a week or maybe a little more. The costs involved are also greatly reduced by the new technology. Before NGS was invented, the first human genome study had a cost of 3 billion USD. Today, a reagent cost of $5,000 is sufficient for one genome.

This technology is also highly scalable and offers the ability to process both small and large numbers of samples as per the requirement of the study. There is also a great flexibility in terms of the resolution required. This means that we can zoom in on a genome to get a detailed view or zoom out to look at an expansive view.

Drug Discovery Technology – Target Identification and Validation

Pharmaceuticals and healthcare are two fields that have been receiving attention past several years. With technological breakthroughs in fields like biotechnology, computational chemistry, molecular modeling and genomics, the area of drug discovery promises reductions in costs as well as the times involved to bring the drugs into the market.

Drug discovery technology has evolved greatly over the years and today, seeks to develop new models which significantly reduce the costs involved. In the past, most of the drug discovery procedures were based on screening products derived from plants and microorganisms. This process still continues today but with much better efficiency, thanks to the new drug discovery technology.

Today, chemists and biologists work together to fully understand the mechanisms of a disease before synthesizing potential drug candidates. Molecular modeling makes it possible to study the structure and properties of molecules in a sample with the help of computer programs. The data hence obtained is analyzed to predict the structure of a possible drug candidate. This is known as target identification. Once such potential drug candidates are obtained, target validation is take up, which aims to prove that the target is appropriate for the development of new drugs.

Both of these processes need to be done with utmost care and accuracy in order to discover new and effective drugs which are affordable. High Content Screening is one technology that has made the process of drug discovery much faster producing accurate results. Automation of this process also makes is highly cost-effective.