Adds to an existing strong product team to widen our lead over competitors and brings new expertise and ideas.

Baltimore, Md, Sapio Sciences, leading provider of Laboratory Management  Software welcomes Joseph Walker as the new Director of Product Management.  Joseph was a Senior Scientist and Product manager at Resilience, formerly Riffyn, and  brings over a decade of experience to Sapio, starting on January 3rd. 

“We are excited to have Joe join us” said Kevin Cramer, Chief Scientist and CEO at  Sapio. “Joe brings talent, knowledge, and enthusiasm to our already strong team.” 

While at Resilience, Joe led the overall product development and implementation of  Riffyn’s Nexus software. He collaborated with engineering, DevOps, and QA teams to  create project requirements and was the voice of the customer, engaging with key  stakeholders to conduct research and gather feedback on new and existing features.  Not only did he strategize the product roadmap for software releases, but his in-depth knowledge of the product enabled him to deliver automated solutions for data analysis, visualization, and reporting. 

Joe received a BS in Biotechnology from the University of California, Davis, in 2009.  While there, he focused on microbiology and fermentation and was Vice President of  Delta Sigma Phi Fraternity, Gamma Sigma chapter. He is an avid outdoorsman and has  made ascents of Mt. Rainer, Mt. Shasta, Mt. Whitney and climbed classic trad routes in  Yosemite including Braille Brook, Cathedral Peak and Matthes Crest. He resides in the  San Francisco Bay area and supports the Giants, Warriors and Niners. 

He will be working actively with the sales team collaborating closely with Ed Halpin, VP  of Sales and Marketing. Additionally, Joe will team up with Kevin Cramer to manage Sapio’s product development. This will enable Sapio to reach more clients and further our competitive lead.

About Sapio Sciences 

Sapio Sciences is a leading provider of Laboratory Management, Electronic Lab  Notebook, and Knowledge Management Solutions. Our Mission is to Facilitate &  Accelerate the Development of Drugs to Improve the Human Condition. Trusted by  Large and Small Pharma, numerous Biotechs, Clinical Labs, and more. 

Media Contact: 

Ed Halpin
edhalpin@sapiosciences.com
607-813-4180
www.sapiosciences.com

Buying the Right Electronic Lab Notebook is Hard

Today there are likely 50+ Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELN) on the market.  Given that, how is one to find the right one for their needs?  Well, it’s not easy is the truth.  Therefore it’s important to not be hasty in your selection or to simply buy the low cost option that “looks OK.”

ELN’s have Evolved from their Chemistry Roots

If you go back 20 years or so almost all Electronic Lab Notebooks were chemistry focused.  They would help you design molecules, the primary drug type at the time, and inventory them, search for them etc.  If you were a chemist, these were great tools to assist you in your day to day scientific work.  But they really were not intended or designed to be general lab notebooks, or able to deal with new treatment modalities with the introduction of large molecules in more recent times.

The ELN Evolution continues, but now with a heavy focus on Large Molecule

History has repeated itself now with ELN’s now being introduced that target large molecule work with tools like plasmid editors, but also some more general lab notebook capabilities like a registry and general note taking capabilities.   The chem ELN vendors are also trying, usually via acquisition or partnerships, to address their shortcomings in the large molecule space, and the large molecule ELN vendors are trying to incorporate small molecule support as well.

The problem with both ELN approaches is two-fold:

• They still primarily focus on either small or large molecules and are not general ELN platforms that do equally well in either domain
• They do not sufficiently address LIMS system needs as this is still viewed as a separate application domain

A Digital Transformation Perspective

Instead of looking to buy an ELN or a LIMS, you should look for an informatics platform that unites both LIMS and ELN features into a single, low-code, no-code solution.  The ideal electronic lab notebook should also be the ideal LIMS system no matter what types of drugs you are creating or processes you are modeling.  It should also include science aware tools for designing molecules, reactions, plasmids, or CRISPR even.  But it should also include powerful searching, data visualizations, and informatics so you can search, visualize and analyse data across your enterprise that has been digitally transformed.  It should be quickly adaptable, the hallmark of a platform, even if it lacks something you need.

What to watch out for

Some vendors perform excellent packaged demos, and/or instead of selling their solution sell you on who else they have sold to.  Also watch out for vendors whose organization is largely comprised of sales people If you are getting calls from multiple sales people from the same company, run the other way!

It’s critical to perform your own, detailed evaluation!  Make the vendor do a deep dive into their product…get them outside their comfort zone by presenting challenges to them that go beyond their well crafted demo.  If they don’t step up to the plate and show they can do it then its likely their solution is not really a platform and will be hard to implement or even get to do what you need at all.

We will close with a comment from Kevin, our CEO and Chief Scientist, “Increasingly biotech and pharma R&D organizations are looking for our unified low-code, no-code informatics platform on which all our applications are built and tightly integrated.  This enables our customers to digitally transform their organizations to streamline their operations, reduce costs and accelerate discovery which is our mission.”

Sapio Sciences is Rebranding it’s Exemplar LIMS and Exemplar ELN Solutions as Sapio LIMS and Sapio ELN.

Sapio Sciences is a leading provider of its Informatics platform addressing the Lab Management (LIMS), Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) and Scientific Data Management Software (SDMS) markets.  Today we are announcing that we are rebranding our solutions through the discontinuation of the Exemplar name on our product line and will now utilize the well recognized Sapio brand name instead.

While we will often now refer to Sapio LIMS, Sapio ELN and Sapio SDMS solution names as appropriate, we generally prefer to think of our solution as the Sapio Informatics Platform.  If we didn’t want to minimize adjectives, we would ideally like to call it the Sapio low-code, no-code, science-aware, informatics platform, but that’s probably too much to digest.

We will close with a comment from Kevin, our CEO and Chief Scientist, “Increasingly biotech and pharma R&D organizations are coming to us for our unified low-code, no-code informatics platform on which all our applications are built and tightly integrated.  This enables our customers to digitally transform their organizations to streamline their operations, reduce costs and accelerate discovery.  Our success with our science-aware platform has clearly made the Sapio name our key brand and diminished the need for any additional branding as we had previously with Exemplar.”

Periodically scientists and laboratory professionals perform searches to determine “what is the best LIMS software.” With so many changes in technology, the results are overwhelming when comparing one vendor’s LIMS software to another’s. While the applications appear different, the primary needs of the laboratory remain the same:

• Manage internal and external requests
• Guide laboratory scientists through lab processes
• Increase the quality of results
• Ensure reproducible results
• Maintain compliance when in clinical settings
• Track data related to samples and processes

The LIMS of Yesterday

A LIMS (laboratory information management system) has traditionally been thought of as the building block of laboratory technology strategy. It often began as spreadsheets or internally built applications to keep track of inventory management for samples, instruments, and test results. Top LIMS vendors were historically known to charge large amounts for the application and take years to deploy. This is because LIMS software was more software development services than a software product. The result was a continuous requirement gathering exercise and custom feature development that often didn’t meet the needs of research laboratories.

The LIMS of Today

A modern laboratory management system has more built-in features for sample management and inventory management and usually sports some configurable elements. The majority of the LIMS systems are also web-based LIMS software. A lab can purchase and take advantage of the out-of-the-box LIMS features. Integration to instruments, ELNs (electronic laboratory notebooks), and analytics systems may not exist. Also, the complexity and importance of the business processes and workflows often require configurations not available in the LIMS software forcing the business to adapt to the laboratory management software instead of the software adapting to the business needs. The features needed may require development of the software that will be delivered in a future version release. This again slows down the full deployment of the software to benefit the research laboratories while increasing both real and opportunity costs.

The LIMS of Tomorrow

The demands for LIMS software in pharma or clinical LIMS software are higher than ever in these ever-evolving competitive markets. Outside of the typical patient, sample, and inventory management capabilities, the LIMS of tomorrow has many requirements to meet.

A few key features industry has indicated are important include:

• Low activation energy
• Higher data volume support
• Rapid deployment 
• Rapid adaptation to changes
• Integration capabilities with systems and instruments
• Low code or no code configurations 
• Flexible processes and workflows
• Fully configurable data model
• Regulatory compliance
• Integrated charting
• Advanced integrated searching
• Integrated analytics
• Combined LIMS and Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELN)

However, more than ever, there are requests for the silos between applications such as LIMS, ELN, Lab Execution System (LES), and SDMS to disappear. Having a centralized system of a true laboratory information management system is highly appealing.

What is the Best LIMS Software?

Perhaps the best LIMS software is more than just a LIMS. For the software to be able to be adaptable to different scenarios, it must be designed in this way from the beginning. The best way to do this is to have an informatics system that is built from the ground up as a platform. A platform is a software that is application-agnostic and can become any application. Sapio started with a platform and progressively built on it a LIMS, ELN, and SDMS that are seamlessly integrated. 

While much harder to develop and deliver, what makes this approach worthwhile and powerful is that any application that is built on top of the platform will inherit the implicit capabilities of the platform including:

• Fully configurable data model
• Powerful searching
• Easy to create and view advanced data visualizations
• Configurable no-code business rules
• Controlled permissions on data as well as features and functions
• Full auditability
• Intuitive user interface
• Configurable data views
• Unlimited role support, each with its own permissions
• Extensible API supporting multiple languages

Having a LIMS system built on a platform is great, but ideally, you can have an ELN built on the same platform, and not only will they share the same data model, but also the same underlying capabilities for enterprise-level search, visualizations, and analytics. Extend the platform to include your SDMS R&D efforts at your organization.

Exemplar Seamless LIMS is a LIMS system built on a powerful, scalable informatics platform. Combined with Exemplar Seamless ELN, it will break down barriers to collecting and interpreting your data and processes accelerating your discovery efforts. Exemplar Seamless LIMS and Exempla Seamless ELN include all of the key features mentioned above as well as integrated chat, permission-based access to data and features, and the unique feature of real-time collaboration, science aware capabilities such as large and small molecule design and registration capabilities.  Exemplar Seamless also is the only LIMS software or ELN that supports true collaboration with concurrent workflow and experiment support so scientists can work together in real-time and see each other’s updates to the experiment in real-time.

Want to know more about Exemplar LIMS?

Click here to learn more about Exemplar Seamless LIMS\ELN.