Mettler Toledo Briefing Note
Axendia was recently briefed by Tobias Pfister, Head of Business Development, Fabian Hobi, Product Manager, and Nuala Nic Ghearault, Marketing Manager, of LabXTM Laboratory Software at METTLER TOLEDO, a global manufacturer of precision instruments, founded in 1945. In today’s Life Science laboratories, data from precision instrumentation like balances and pH meters are typically printed out on paper and manually transferred to laboratory notebooks, which is labor-intensive and risks transcription errors and data integrity issues. In addition, having multiple instrument-specific printers and computers takes up valuable bench space, which has become increasingly costly. The METTLER TOLEDO LabX Software Platform for instrument control and data management aims to help alleviate these burdens by providing out-of-the-box instrument integration to make data accessible and audit-ready in a laboratory’s centralized database.
Increasing Productivity in the Laboratory
Life Science laboratories are notorious for having a wide range of routine and analytical instrumentation, which results in disparate, siloed data. Anyone who has been at the bench will undoubtedly recall any number of METTLER TOLEDO instruments they used in the lab without thinking twice about them except to periodically perform required maintenance calibrations. What we’ll also remember during our daily work is manually writing down data values from the instrument’s digital interface or taping a paper printout into our laboratory notebooks. If using that information in subsequent analyses, we’d then find ourselves transferring those data into a spreadsheet to run any number of calculations. When you’re used to doing things a certain way, you don’t always consider how the situation could be improved. Although this manual mode may have gotten us through graduate school, when we enter the commercial realm, we need to be thinking about efficiencies, even for the most routine analyses. This foundational digitalization is a seemingly simple ask, but according to Pfister, “We still see paper as one of the dominating practices at play. It’s getting to be less so on the regulated side of the business, like in Quality Control, but paper is still quite present in the life science industry as a whole.”
METTLER TOLEDO’s first step in addressing this roadblock to digitalization has been to ensure the instruments themselves have a touchscreen interface. There is a harmonized experience across their instrumentation, with a universal login that brings the user to a home screen with a list of methods and tasks available. “This relatively simple feature eliminates the need to have a computer adjacent to the instrument, so you can really focus on your work and the data being generated,” says Pfister. “The data are then automatically recorded in the background and in your central database. These features significantly improve productivity, enhance risk management, allow greater user and workflow control and reduce training and monitoring needs.”
Simplify Complexity, Enhance Connectivity
The journey towards out-of-the box integration of the METTLER TOLEDO instrumentation portfolio began in 2010 with LabX, which allowed for shared functionalities and streamlined user management, according to Pfister. Additional instruments in the METTLER TOLEDO portfolio are connected with each new software release.
Despite the high likelihood of a METTLER TOLEDO solution being in place in most labs, Pfister and Hobi recognize that each life science company’s digital ecosystem is comprised of technology from multiple vendors, and given the industry’s push for digital sustainability across life science technology providers, METTLER TOLEDO continues to build a robust collaboration network, states Pfister. Examples include connectivity with vendors of Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), Electronic Notebook (ELN), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), chromatography data system (CDS), third-party sample preparation, automation and analytical instrumentation. For example, METTLER TOLEDO has collaborations with ABB Robotics, Agilent and LabWare, enabling integration with robotics and out-of-the-box LabX integrations with LIMS and ELN, respectively.
The adoption of LabX is predominantly in Quality Control labs, but there is absolutely applicability to R&D, according to Pfister. Considering how this landscape continues to evolve, an open dialogue amongst companies is especially important. Each vendor and partner are continuously learning from their customers about specific use cases and needs.
Audit-Readiness is Critical
As the industry continues to grapple with transitioning from paper to digital, one of the barriers to adoption that Pfister cited was that so many legacy laboratory instruments (without digital interfaces) have an incredibly long lifespan, and that their replacement simply hasn’t become a priority, despite the relatively low investment required. In addition to the loss of productivity that staying on paper perpetuates, the reliance on paper-based processes puts a company at much greater risk of data integrity issues. During our discussion, the METTLER TOLEDO team provided an example of a company that had received a warning letter from the FDA because the lab was using balances that did not lock the time and date stamp, i.e. the time and date stamp on the readings from the balances could be modified. Pfister described this situation where “the FDA knew of the outdated functionality of the lab’s solution and enforced upon the company that they needed to implement a more robust and fool-proof solution. This is where LabX shines, as everything is recorded, and there is no way to circumvent the audit trail. This visibility and accountability are crucial for the company’s success and saves them time and energy in the long run.”
In Brief
Resolving data silos continues to be a major challenge in the quest for progressing digital transformation in the life sciences industry. What makes this even more challenging is the fact that so many labs are still fragmented in the way that data are captured in the first place, and that starts with the routine instrumentation that we often take for granted. METTLER TOLEDO has acknowledged this crucial aspect of data capture that will make it easier for laboratories to ensure accuracy, data integrity and audit-readiness while also saving staff’s time, space in the lab and preventing unnecessary paper waste.
We will continue to provide updates on METTLER TOLEDO as they become available.
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