By Amit Chopra,
Our present world is amid a fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4., which encompasses the Internet of Things (IOT), additive manufacturing, digital reality, large information, artificial intelligence (ML, DL, robotics), hybrid cloud and cybersecurity. Of these regions, the ones that seamlessly integrate the cyber and physical worlds appear to be the most appropriate to assist navigate the challenges posed by the ongoing pandemic. We have seen digital reality emerging as a crucial enabler in guaranteeing an enhanced consumer encounter and business enterprise continuity amid the pandemic.
The Virtual Reality Landscape
Digital reality is a hypernym for augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality and a gamut of other connected technologies. Virtual Reality (VR) entails working with audio and video to immerse a user in the encounter of an artificial atmosphere, frequently in 3D and with 360 degrees of vision. This creates a completely rendered digital atmosphere that substitutes the user’s true-world atmosphere.
This is valuable in healthcare in regions like patient management, point of care, tele-wellness, and home-based care. Life sciences organizations are also working with VR to optimize production of pretty costly merchandise, e.g., manufacturing for chimeric antigen receptor (Vehicle) T-cell therapy. VR can allow deep coaching across sales, manufacturing, and distribution by simulating several “what-if” scenarios that could possibly reduce leakage.
With the expanding marketplace of wellness and preventive wellness, insurers are also working with virtual reality to “gamify” prevention journeys, e.g., displaying customers in 3D what they could possibly look like if they followed a specific diet regime or incorporated specific life-style adjustments. These have led to the healthcare & life sciences virtual reality marketplace to be projected to attain USD 8.03 billion by 2027, registering a CAGR of 16.21%.
Enter Covid-19
The pandemic brought to this current landscape the extra complexity of becoming in a position to conduct threat-free of charge analysis & production operations. Risk-free of charge, in the time of a worldwide pandemic, is frequently “contact-less.” It has turn into crucial for service providers to rapidly adapt to the “new-normal” with digital tools that assist their consumers lessen physical exposure. Technologies like virtual reality can prove to be a considerable differentiator in such scenarios by enabling teams to rapidly evaluate a solution, service or remedy in a virtual, make contact with-significantly less and threat-free of charge atmosphere.
Labatar- A virtual consumer encounter centre
In India, consumers generally pay a visit to the Customer Experience Centers (CEC) to see initially-hand our revolutionary capabilities in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, meals security, forensics, analytical options and laboratory essentials. The CECs provide researchers, scientists, and business practitioners access to our sophisticated business top technologies and options.
The pandemic severely restricted these physical consumer visits to the CECs, but that gap was rapidly filled by the launch of Labatar — the initially virtual lab in India last year. Built on virtual reality technologies, it delivers a platform to show the depth and scale of Thermo Fisher’s capabilities in supporting customers’ crucial demands. The tool gives an immersive on the web encounter to our consumers by assisting them engage practically with our state-of-the-art technologies whilst performing complicated analysis. The platform seamlessly depicts a completely equipped lab atmosphere and walks the user via each and every step of a workflow, working with quick-to-comprehend guidelines that simulate the experiments performed in a physical lab.
As of now, the platform hosts two workflows, one that shows biosimilar characterization by hydrogen-deuterium exchange (HDX) reaction. This analytical approach is expanding in recognition amongst pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and analysis organizations, in particular for studying larger order protein structures for epitope mapping, screening drug candidates and in the comparison of biopharmaceutical to biosimilars.
Recently, a new workflow on Labatar, ‘Virus detection by Real time PCR method,’ showcases extensive options for COVID-19 testing working with true-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) technique. The RT-PCR based testing technique is exceptionally sensitive, correct, and is regarded the gold common test for detection of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The platform also gives expediency, enabling consumers to discover from business authorities whilst performing experiments with the click of a mouse and get a initially-hand, virtual encounter of handling them. The pandemic has irreversibly changed the way persons interact with technologies. We should really assistance researchers and scientists across the globe who are working to create therapies and vaccines for COVID-19. Now, more than ever, we stay steadfast in our mission to allow our consumers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer.
(The author is Managing Director, India and South Asia, Thermo Fisher Scientific. Views expressed are individual and do not reflect the official position or policy of the TheSpuzz Online.)