GWC was able to automate tons of manual data entry, saving our technicians and scientists a huge amount of time every day. Working with them has been fantastic!
Catharine Aquino
Genomics Unit Managing Director,
Functional Genomics Center Zurich
Client Success Story:
Laboratory Automation at a high-throughput NGS Core
Who?
Functional Genomics Center Zurich (FGCZ) is a high-throughput next-generation DNA + RNA sequencing facility, processing over 10'000 samples per month.
What Industry?
These custom workflow automations were built for Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) applications.
When?
The collaboration between GWC and FGCZ to automate standard lab-protocols began in 2022.
The Development Journey
Workflow Audit and planning
FGCZ had a variety of manual workflows, depending on spreadsheets and manual calculation steps.
The first step was to map the workflows and calculate the maximal savings potential and the highest potential savings via automation.
In collaboration with FGCZ we identified the greatest areas for opportunity and began integrating.
Sprint planning and "Definition of Done" are prepared for all features, concretely defining the scope of the automation services.
iNITIAL Implementation and deployment
After a short 2-week sprint, a GUI is online in the lab.
We integrate continuously on the basis of 2-week sprints, for the entirey of the project, facilitating constant direct communication about the project outcomes and successes.
After 2 weeks the initial proof of concept is built, capable of ingesting laboratory data from several QC instruments at the center.
Iteration
After 2 more sprints in collaboration with FGCZ internal IT, their LIMS has been fully integrated and ready to store the data generated by the QC instruments!
We continue iteration in blocks of 2-week sprints until all project objectives have reached the "definition of done".
Final deployment, docs and workshop
After all major milestones of the project are successfully met, the final versions of all workflow GUIs are deployed and ready for use by technicians!
A short training workshop is held, documentation and bug-report interface are all deployed and connected to GWC's ticketing system, to make sure that any problems can be solved immediately.
All relevant software packages are hosted in a version-controlled repository, and made public as open-source software.
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Ongoing support
To this day, we continue to support FGCZ as primary consultants in their automation journey.
FGCZ has saved both time and money on their project and we continue to support them in maximizing their savings with further automations, as well as support of existing automations.
Discover
Want to See our Apps?
Check out the variety of open source apps we built bring this project to life!
What our client had to say:
Automate Your Workflows Today!
Save time and money by automating painful manual data entry steps in all your complex workflows!