2017 ended in a flurry of activity for Lab7. We started the Fall with pumpkin spice lattes and a trip to Washington, D.C. for the Next Generation Dx Summit. Whereas in the past, this conference was essentially a how-to manual on setting up a NGS diagnostics lab and navigating regulatory issues, this year’s meeting gravitated toward informatics. Scientists focused on ways to better analyze, organize, and track both the samples and data coming off increasing numbers of sequencers. There was also a great deal of discussion around data sharing: how can groups from different labs, clinics, and hospitals begin collaborating around de-identified patient data?
November marked Lab7 Systems’ first year sponsoring the Plant Genomics and Gene Editing Congress. The team had a great time in Philadelphia’s Historic District learning about the expanding use of genomics in agriculture. We were proud to share how implementing Lab7’s Enterprise Science Platform for over one million samples at the USDA’s US Meat Animal Research Center created operational efficiencies and increased productivity for the group.
We closed out the year in Boston at the Proventa Bioinformatics Strategy Meeting where our Founder and CTO, Chris Mueller, lead an engaging round table discussion on building stable, scalable informatics infrastructures to increase efficiency and reduce laboratory costs. The attendees (mostly from large pharmaceutical companies) shared that the challenge of data intensive scientific applications has shifted. A few years ago scientists were drowning in data. They were simply trying to keep up. Today, with tools like NoSQL databases, Spark, Docker, Jupyter, etc., folks are more comfortable dealing with the influx of data and are working on ways to organize, curate and track the many transformations of their data.
Looking forward, 2018 is lining up to be a breakthrough year for Lab7! We’re kicking things off at the Plant and Animal Genome Conference in San Diego Jan. 13 – 18, followed by the Molecular Medicine TriConference in San Francisco Feb. 11 – 16. Come check us out!