The COVID-19 pandemic has many of us spending less time (if any at all) in the lab. Even in “normal” times there are usually long stretches when no one is around to check on the progress of a long-running protocol or hear an out-of-spec alarm from a -80⁰ freezer—something that may need to be dealt with immediately. But not being there doesn’t have to mean being out of touch.
Remote lab monitoring is “a peace of mind knowing that if something is not well, the system will let you know,” says Stephen Tierney, president of lab monitoring company XiltriX North America. More and more frequently it is also the ability to access relevant information, from anywhere, in real time.
No access
“Our system is FDA-compliant—Title 21 CFR part 11. That means we are not allowed to send a signal back to pieces of equipment,” he notes.
“There is a big difference between monitoring systems versus access or control systems. Monitoring systems give you objective facts. Control systems change those results.” Put another way, doing both prevents you from being an independent referee.
One advantage that difference conveys is that there is far less incentive to hacking into a monitoring-only system. And the damage potentially done, if it were to occur, would be very limited.
Dashboard
There are different levels of remote monitoring. On the one hand it can include tracking site-wide information such who enters and leaves the building and the temperature in the parking garage. At the other, it can be as basic as having an incubator’s built-in sensor send an alert when the CO2 concentration goes outside a designated range. For most of Biocompare’s readership, the sweet spot lies somewhere in between.
It is possible to have each piece of equipment or area monitored individually, sending out alerts the same way an audible alarm would sound if something went awry.
Alerts can be sent through the cloud or over a network, and received on laptops, tablets, or smartphones, as text messages or phone calls. “Anything that can receive a signal can be pinged by these systems,” says Gary Bissig, vice president of lab equipment distributor LabRepCo.
For users who are looking for more than just yes/no, open/closed, in-spec/out-of-spec information—and especially those with multiple items to keep track of—a common dashboard is a huge convenience. Here, information from each sensor is relayed over the cloud or network, collected, and presented as an organized, consolidated user interface. Generally, this is a subscription-based service, offering a variety of customizable logistical and analytical tools in addition to basic alerts.
“We’re collecting information about the equipment on a regular basis, and we keep all of the information,” explains Elizabeth McGarry, marketing manager of monitoring service Elemental Machines. That information can be used to generate reports or, “if there’s a discrepancy or something they need to understand for reproduction of an experiment … or if there are any changes or even slight fluctuations in anything we’re monitoring. The alerts are there when something is really changing. But the monitoring is in place to understand the environments that our monitors are in on an ongoing basis.”
In addition to the convenience of having everything in one place—not having to have ten separate systems reporting on ten different parameters, for example—Tierney likes to emphasize the big picture aspect of remote monitoring. “Remote is also integrating different data sets and sensor points and sensor readings,” he says. “If the temperature and humidity in your lab affect the temperature and humidity in your incubator, it’s very difficult to get an overview from a distance if you have separate systems for that.”
What’s being monitored and how?
Most monitoring is done on temperature control units—incubators and ovens, refrigerators, and freezers of all types. Humidity and partial gas pressures are often reported on. A small segment of the market is devoted to things like volatile organic compounds (VOCs), light intensity, and vibration. Data from liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry can be relayed. “For production suites, where you’re making something, they will have particle counters in their hood, because they want to make sure there’s documentation that there’s been no contamination in the process. You’ll have differential pressure in clean rooms, … proximity card readers on freezers,” Bissig says. “If it can be measured, it can be monitored at this point.”
Most newer temperature control equipment has built-in sensors that can be tapped into for remote monitoring. These are most often digital, reporting simply that temperature is within the set parameters or not, for example—not unlike contact sensors reporting that a door is open but not how open the door is.
Some higher-end freezers will have a built-in analog (4–20 mA) probe that “can give you a real time readout of exactly what the temperature conditions are in the unit,” says Bissig. Not all do, because “these are expensive.” Instead, almost all modern freezers have a port through which an after-market 4–20 mA probe can access the inside of the unit.
Blue Rover, which monitors cold storage for things like vaccines and food, offers a different solution. “We send you something that looks like a cell phone in a box. You stick it in your fridge, and you go to the website and look at the temperature,” explains president David Melia.
Communication
“It doesn’t use WiFi, it uses cellular—we have global partnerships with all the cellular providers,” Melia explains. “Most remote monitoring is done on WiFi, or Ethernet, or plugs in to the existing infrastructure. We all know that when WiFi goes down you piggyback onto you cell phone.”
There are advocates for each method of transmitting data.
McGarry points to the ease of connecting wireless devices (such as its temperature and data collection elements). “We have the ability to come out and install anything that’s needed, but in general, for most of our labs, they can set up everything on their own.” Her company uses mostly Bluetooth and WiFi, but provides cellular backup.
Murray Wigmore, vice president of sales and marketing of equipment manufacturer PHCbi (formerly Panasonic), wonders aloud whether cellular data is going to take over from WiFi: “You can pretty much get cell signal anywhere; you might not be able to get an Internet connection in some areas.”
And Tierney points to the reliability of a physical connection: “A cable doesn’t fail unless it’s cut. Wireless solutions are just not robust.”
The future is not just failure
“Here’s where the future is: predictive analytics,” says Bissig.
Some companies use artificial intelligence and machine learning to track the performance of the units they monitor, comparing it to thousands of other units. “They look for inconsistencies and incongruities that give you a predictive percentage probability of failure within a particular timeframe,” he explains. “It will tell you it may be time for service to come and take a look, or it may be time to replace.”