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Equipment monitoring is more than just recording temperature and other vital metrics on a regular basis. Time-to-market, budgetary spending, and revenue generation are key metrics for many organizations. Is your organization investing in infrastructure that will help you achieve these goals? The Elemental Machines platform provides lab managers, operations managers, quality managers, scientists, and engineers with efficient solutions for:

  • Equipment Monitoring: 24/7 continuous monitoring and alerting to ensure uptime and compliant operation of all critical assets
  • Data Archival and Retrieval: secure and reliable data repositories
  • Asset Utilization: Estimation of utilization to drive budgeting and purchasing decisions

During routine operations, our network is collecting data 24/7 on your valuable assets and environments. These data can be used across the organization to ensure operations are functioning smoothly and that development programs are on track. Should there be an out of spec event, having instant access to the data prompts:

  • An alert to be automatically sent to the lab manager notifying them of an out of spec condition
  • A notification to the quality manager letting them know of the out of spec condition for regulatory reporting so they can file a report on the incident
  • A notification to the R&D manager so they can check to make sure the incident hasn’t affected their research protocol

The data collected can be used across the organization, improving efficiency for all stakeholders.

Easy Integration

Our IoT sensors are easy to install, and will work with virtually any equipment or asset, providing you with the ability to monitor a single machine or a fleet of assets spread over multiple locations. The reporting is technology-agnostic and can be made to conform with even the most stringent compliance formats.

To learn more about equipment monitoring click below to go to that chapter:

  1. Freezer Monitoring
  2. Lab Equipment Monitoring
  3. Cold Storage Equipment Monitoring
  4. Continuous Temperature Monitoring Device
  5. Freezer Alarm
  6. Incubator Monitoring
  7. OEM Equipment
  8. Cryo Monitoring

ETLife Science Incubator Uses Elemental Machines for Efficiency and Peace of Mind

LabCentral is a shared laboratory space designed as a launchpad for high potential life-sciences and biotech startups. Problem LabCentral has numerous -20°C and -80°C freezers, refrigerators, cold rooms, incubators, and cryogenic freezers. They were monitoring the -80°C freezers with TCA-3 monitoring devices, but the rest of their equipment was not being monitored digitally. LabCentral was using the Accsense operating system for monitoring the -80° freezers, which provided helpful 24/7 notifications. However, they had issues with the TCA-3 devices failing over time and being unreliable. They were looking for a reliable solution that would provide monitoring as well as advanced reporting for all of their equipment. Solution LabCentral started using Elemental Machines Element-T devices to track all of their cold storage equipment. 

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lab freezerPeople love surveys, and we’re no exception. After all, data from a pool of respondents on an interesting topic lets you pattern match to see if your profile matches your cohort. So, being the curious types that we are, Elemental Machines conducted a survey of lab managers and other science professionals to: Learn more about their experiences and monitoring priorities, Understand how they think about strategic uses of the data, and Know what they do with the data and where they store it.

Here’s what we found. The Findings First, most people can relate to the issue of lab losses -- sadly. From our data, 71% of respondents have experienced catastrophic equipment failure that resulted in loss of critical samples or materials. To the survey takers and others who’ve shared that experience, we’re terribly sorry. Truly. 71% of survey respondents have experienced catastrophic equipment failures that have resulted in loss of critical samples or materials.

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Internet of Things (IoT) technology is changing the way scientists collect and utilize data. By monitoring instrument and equipment status as well as the laboratory environment, scientists are able to better understand physical variables in the lab that may affect their research.

 

When considering a laboratory monitoring system, there are a number of variables to consider.

1. MONITORING SHOULD BE RELIABLE AND CONVENIENT Critical to the success of any lab monitoring system is its usability. For any monitoring system to be remotely useful, data must be easy to access and readily available 24/7 to teams both on-site and to those working remotely. Preference should be given to products with intuitive designs and shared web-based dashboards that enable users to track the performance of critical instruments and equipment, to understand usage patterns to optimize operations, and to quickly identify potential issues that may arise. For many labs, change is inevitable, and flexibility is the key to success. Having the capacity to adapt quickly and easily to accommodate future projects is a necessary consideration for most lab managers. For this reason, equipment monitoring solutions should be scalable both user-wise and equipment-wise. Wireless and battery operated monitoring devices offer the easiest installation solution for laboratory monitoring, and when equipped with low-battery warnings and cellular backups they offer 24/7 operation with full confidence that data will always be available.

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Time-to-market, budgetary spending, and revenue generation are key metrics for many organizations. Is your organization investing in infrastructure that will help you achieve these goals? The Elemental Machines platform provides lab managers, operations managers, quality managers, scientists, and engineers with efficient solutions for:

Equipment Monitoring: 24/7 continuous monitoring and alerting to ensure uptime and compliant operation of all critical assets

Data Archival and Retrieval: secure and reliable data repositories

Asset Utilization: Estimation of utilization to drive budgeting and purchasing decisions

During routine operations, our network is collecting data 24/7 on your valuable assets and environments. These data can be used across the organization to ensure operations are functioning smoothly and that development programs are on track. Should there be an out of spec event, having instant access to the data prompts:

An alert to be automatically sent to the lab manager notifying them of an out of spec condition

A notification to the quality manager letting them know of the out of spec condition for regulatory reporting so they can file a report on the incident

A notification to the R&D manager so they can check to make sure the incident hasn’t affected their research protocol

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This full-scale analytical testing laboratory offers analysis to a wide array of industries including: Agriculture, Animal Feed, Environmental, Food, Fuels, and Pet Food.

Problem

The laboratory was using a homemade system of continuous monitoring nodes for tracking their equipment. “The nodes were wired into panels. We had to run wires all the way through equipment, drill holes in them. It was a pretty crude system. We built the software around it utilizing offsets from an HVAC company,” said Jessica, head of Quality Assurance.

In addition to being a crude system that involved a lot of manual set-up time, the alerts system was complicated to set up and required regular calibration. In addition, their lab is required to be NIST compliant, which means all of the equipment must be serialized and accounted for with NIST on a yearly basis. Getting their homemade system compliant, required two people spending 2 months of working time per year to verify all of the equipment.

Solution

The laboratory decided to implement Elemental Machines. All of EM’s equipment is NIST traceable so it can be immediately installed and used in their lab. Elemental Machines also implemented a custom calibration feature that allows the laboratory to hire a 3rd party calibrator or use their own staff to calibrate devices.

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INTRODUCTION

The potential behind new biological therapies and stem cell research is fueling an uptick in biological research. Many of these studies require growing specialized cells, such as immortalized and stem cells. Growing these high value cells requires special care, from the raw materials to the process equipment, such as CO2 incubators.

There are several incubator parameters that scientists assign and monitor to ensure proper cell growth and proliferation:

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Data Management for Laboratory Equipment

BACKGROUND

Data is one of your company’s most valuable assets. Scientific data, in particular, represents the output of countless hours of coordinated investment in resources such as equipment and time. The data collected takes on many forms, from simple (such as a weight measurement) to complex (such as HPLC data). Gathering and interpreting these complete data sets is necessary for troubleshooting reproducibility, improving workflows, and maintaining quality records.

There is growing interest in reliable data archival solutions. One study revealed that two years after a publication, the probability of accessing raw data from a scientific study drops by 17% and continues to drop by that amount year after year.1 Scientists concede that the main cause of this is lost data, whether stored on paper documents or electronic media. So how can your organization implement robust data management solutions to ensure continued access to one of its most valuable assets? In this guide we will briefly describe each method, how it’s commonly used, and the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

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Maintaining temperature of cryogenic storage tanks is vitally important to ensure the samples are not harmed. There have been many stories of valuable samples lost due to power outages or simple evaporation of liquid nitrogen. Cryo tank monitoring could have prevented these loses.

SOME SAMPLES ARE IRREPLACEABLE

In a one-week period, two fertility clinics in the US reported issues with cryogenic storage conditions for frozen eggs and embryos. As a result, the viability of thousands of egg and embryo samples is now in question. The estimated cost of lost material, based on the medical procedure expenses and annual storage fees, exceeds ten million dollars. To further complicate matters, in some circumstances, the lost embryos are irreplaceable, as highlighted in lawsuits against both facilities.

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