Your New Lab Partner Is Like Alexa™, But With a Ph.D.

January 23, 2025

Blog: Your New Lab Partner Is Like Alexa™, But With a Ph.D.

Voice-activated assistants have come a long way since 1952, when Bell Laboratories’ Automatic Digit Recognizer (AUDREY) was invented. The first personal computer with built-in voice recognition was released in 1984, although it had a limited vocabulary. In 1997, Dragon Naturally Speaking became a blockbuster product. In the last decade or so, deep neural networks have allowed the development of such household names as Alexa, Google™ Home, Siri™, and CORTANA™. Today, LabTwin is poised to become a laboratory name to fulfill a similar purpose to Alexa or Siri, but at a much more advanced level.

LabTwin, the AI-enabled and voice-activated digital lab assistant, is what you’d get if one of those household names were sent to a Ph.D. program to learn the scientific method, the language of your lab’s science, and typical laboratory protocols. It’s the smartest addition you can make to your lab using your AI budget.

The Unique Capabilities of a Ph.D.-Level Voice-activated Laboratory Assistant 

When you onboard LabTwin to your lab, you immediately gain an assistant who is familiar with your lab’s protocols and can accurately capture spoken scientific language without autocorrecting it inappropriately to something else. LabTwin has been trained on a large language model of scientific terminology, which it can recognize with 95% accuracy. 

LabTwin frees up the hands of your human technicians so they can focus on their experiments without having to worry about documenting their results while they happen or remembering data to record later. Research has shown that 79% of experimental data is not digitized at the bench, so a voice-activated lab assistant could help you change that.

White Paper Integrate Voice into your Lab Informatics Strategy

Unlike human technicians, LabTwin has no trouble recording data in challenging conditions and is not encumbered by personal protective equipment in hazardous environments. If the operator can speak clearly into a headset, LabTwin can record data.

How a Voice-activated Laboratory Assistant Enhances Laboratory Efficiency

LabTwin can be prepopulated with common protocols for your laboratory or research focus. It can then guide you through those protocols, reducing the possibility of human error. Its hands-free operation means that technicians can use both hands to perform complicated experimental steps without having to flip through pages, scroll through screens, or push buttons. LabTwin can also help with time management, as it has a timer for use in specific steps. You can even have multiple timers going simultaneously. These incrementally small efficiency gains add up over the course of a workday and may add up to more than an hour and a half per scientist per week.

A Voice-activated Laboratory Assistant Improves Accuracy and Safety, Too

LabTwin helps your laboratory staff avoid common mistakes with verbal instructions for procedures. Step-by-step guidance makes completing an experiment or following a standard operating procedure much easier. LabTwin’s accurate voice-recognition capabilities automatically document results and observations. 

Your Voice-activated Laboratory Assistant in Action

LabTwin has many applications. Here, we will look at a few examples. 

  • Because LabTwin can be used hands-free, it can capture data easily:
  • In a research and development lab, LabTwin can help develop new protocols based on existing ones or document completely new procedures.
  • LabTwin interfaces with laboratory instruments and with ELNs or LIMS. This enables seamless data flow from the lab bench to the system of record. 
  • LabTwin can also structure data into tables for importing to an ELN. 
  • LabTwin can be validated for use in regulated environments, ensuring that data integrity concerns are alleviated.

Adding a smart, flexible, voice-activated laboratory assistant to your lab can increase your data integrity, reduce human errors, and ensure compliance with relevant standards. Would you like an Alexa, Ph.D., for your lab? Reach out today to see a demo.

Categories