CellPort Connect - CC 105: Why Software Needs to Scale with You
At CellPort, we talk about our software being designed by our scientists for our customers. Scientists, I think that's important because it underscores the importance of the domain expertise that may or may not be present in other software packages that are out there. The depth and breadth of that, whether it's from a technical perspective, from a scientific perspective that's something that we absolutely cover in CellPort, particularly in CellPort 3.0. I know Patrick that you've had experience with that at absorption systems going through all phases from research through GLP and GMP.
I think one of the benefits we have of the system is building several iterations, which is culminating in this 3.0 launch in the early stages of of CellPort. We were capturing key components and introducing a digital system to an existing operation. We had, we had some starts and fails that that occurred there and in those starts and fails, we sort of learned what actually can work and what works. Kind of what we believe is going to be universal and we saw that again in, in, in the 2.0 version as we got better and optimized it. We began to see that the feedback and interaction with the scientists at the bench were giving us insight into how to, to develop the next version and that is what we're seeing now, coming to the next level, which is the relationship of the scientist to their workflow, to their colleagues, to the inventory. It is all interconnected in the process of interconnectivity is really captured from the work experience from the day-to-day operations of our labs. From the perspective of other people that we've seen using other tools that while they may be storing information from a scientific perspective, they don't really have an understanding of cell culture.
Cells are unique in terms of the data and metadata that need to be stored for them. The passing of cells from one generation to the next, all of the content that needs to be stored, tracked, traced from one cell passage to another. That lineage is something that isn't really well captured in any of the other systems that we've seen out there and that's something that's unique to CellPort. The ability to do that and the understanding of that really has to have a very strong scientific underpinning from from the get go.
Yeah, and I I think also how we interconnected, the ability to connect actually experimental data to workflows is fairly important and the reason for that is is the ability to go back and look at which experiments produced what results over time with the vision of creating libraries of data. When I'm mixing and matching experimental conditions, the ability to have a system that not only tracks that information about cells, the passages, the lineage where you started from, from a seeding perspective and where you go from the passaging's, the feedings. Keeping track of all of that information that's vitally important, but the person doing this is not working in isolation, they're working as part of a team that requires coordination's.
It requires collaboration. It requires all the features that we've heard that people need from the interviews that we've had with customers and potential customers. The need for that collaborative environment where they can schedule their events, where they can keep track of all of the notes that they've taken, communicate those with colleagues and managers to ensure that any small deviations are not lost, in the system, that they're tracked and I know from your perspective is heading up absorption systems. That was a critically important thing that led you to be a strong proponent of the new notes and notifications features that we've added to CellPort.
Yeah, if there was one thing that was most disconcerting to me is the, the, the comment of we don't know what's happened and how do I minimize that I track and trace everything I can that is going on without being a burden on the system and the ability to get work done absolutely critical.
We've added that capability in a very frictionless way. The ability to add notes to @-mention someone. So, if I see an observation in the lab and I need to make you aware, I send you a note at Patrick. I've noticed this problem, can you look at it? You'll get a notification both in CellPort and in email or slack or teams or however you need to access that information and that information will be sent to you in a way that drives that offline communication back online so that you'll always have a single source of truth for that information so that those deviations or observations will always be tracked and part of the system that you can refer back to in the future.
Scalability was kind of major pillar that we used in designing the software and that came from our evolution of being a research operation into an operation that had to submit information to the FDA and that process from research, to development, to qualification, to validation is a funnel that at each stage, the level of documentation and checks and balances and focus on. Have we got this right and what are the ranges in which we can work in? We were oftentimes confronted with different mindsets at each of those stages and they do occur, but what we saw was there was no need to change the system. We thought build one system that allows you to actually tighten up and become more rigorous so that you can actually trace back to the R&D roots, which we think helps give an understanding and assurance that what we were seeing before is what we're seeing today. CellPort 3.0 is designed to do just that. It is designed to allow a researcher and a research team to produce and, and uncover a new discovery that needs to be moved to the next level. Well, when I move it to that next stage of increased documentation and QC oversight and QA oversight, I would like to stay as, as a comedian. I do not need to leave the system. I stay in it. I just simply become more robust and I can control that. I can make this system as robust and as sort of restrictive in how data is entered and captured as I so choose. I can also have all of my work witnessed and electronic signature so I make sure that those checks and balances are in place. What we saw was the need for people really changing from one sort of mindset to the next. Yes, you have to change, but you don't have to change your system, right?
One of the things that we've noticed in that transition from research to GLP and GMP is that as you go through that process, the data become more complex and the processes, the protocols, the workflows become more complex and that's one of the wonderful things about CellPort 3.0 is the ability to have that expansion. The ability to go from one phase to the next seamlessly to have the system grow as you need to grow. As your data become more complex, it can handle it as your processes become more complex. 3.0 can handle it. It's all tracked and traced and as you have more needs for rigorous tracking of information for e-signatures further on down the road for witnessing, even further down the road, the system has all of that built in. You don't need to take advantage of it upfront if you are working in a research environment and you don't need that rigor. The rigor will be there when you need it. It doesn't need to be implemented upfront. It can grow with you.
