In a recent announcement, Gilson has launched its Gilson Connect cloud-connected platform that powers a line of Bluetooth-enabled, smart liquid handling devices designed to help scientists achieve verifiable science.
The first smart products include the TRACKMAN Connected and PIPETMAN M Connected, which are designed to give scientists the ability to record and track pipette performance data in real-time and transmit them to sciNote, a free, open-source electronic lab notebook (ELN).
“Gilson is bringing the potential of the Internet of Things to the lab, creating a new standard of verifiable science and helping researchers focus on doing actual science instead of data management,” said Nicolas Paris, CEO, Gilson, “With the Gilson Connect platform, we envision a connected lab bench of the future in which all scientists have access to laboratory tools that communicate seamlessly with each other.”
Studies have shown that 50 to 90 percent of published scientific research cannot be replicated by other scientists. Pipetting can be a significant source of error. Pressing a plunger slower than usual, performing droplet touch-off on the wall of a liquid container, and even ambient temperature can affect performance. Gilson’s first Internet of Things (IoT) products aim to help tackle this problem by making the most fundamental manual exercise in the lab—liquid handling—verifiable.
The new TRACKMAN Connected is an all-in-one kit that includes a tablet with PipettePilot, a microplate pipetting tracker application. The easy-to-use app interacts in real-time with the new PIPETMAN M Connected, a Bluetooth-enabled smart electronic pipette, to guide researchers through their pipetting protocol. By tracking and storing performance, scientists can review the data for errors and export experiment results, accelerating their report sharing capabilities.
Data recording and reporting issues also contribute to irreproducible results. An estimated 17 percent of scientific data is lost each year to a void of missing notebooks, deleted emails, and corrupted files.
The new Gilson devices and apps seek to avoid these problems by enabling data and reports to be pushed to sciNote, an ELN that Gilson has partnered with. Sending data to sciNote automatically creates a secure and consolidated record, helping researchers instantly access and manage the data, create and export reports, or audit the data years later, with far greater speed and reliability than with handwritten notebooks.
Gilson IoT products are available through a limited release to customers who will help co-develop future upgrades through a program of early access testing and feedback. Gilson invites interested labs to join this community by visiting the limited release entry request page.
Ken Briodagh is a writer and editor with more than a decade of experience under his belt. He is in love with technology and if he had his druthers would beta test everything from shoe phones to flying cars.Edited by
Ken Briodagh
