自动化能帮助药物发现吗?

技术的迅速进步正在渗透到医学研究的所有领域，包括制药业。In particular,automation of laborious laboratory processes can yield a plethora of benefits for drug discovery and development, including efficiency, accuracy and reproducibility. Here’s a brief run through some of the more important ways in which automation can aid the pharmaceuticals industry:

Time savings

The status quo of laboratory research sees highly skilled PhD students and postdocs spending far too much time performing menial tasks to conduct experiments, create hypotheses and reach conclusions. However, the heavy lifting of lab work can easily be delegated to robots, leaving humans more time to tackle the really challenging aspects of drug discovery such as idea formulation, development and discussion. Instead of wasting countless hours on repetitive lab work, they will have the time and freedom to devote to intellectual pursuits.

Protocol adherence

In a lab experiment which asks for a sample to be mixed, that instruction could be interpreted in any number of ways by the individual scientists in question, such as shaking, stirring or vortexing, to name just three. However, using a robot to conduct the experiment will create and adhere to a rigid protocol, such as stirring the sample at 100 revolutions per minute for exactly two minutes and at precisely two degrees Celsius. This kind of specificity is crucial in a lab setting where the conditions of an experiment must be exactly replicated in order to produce reliable results.

Data capture

Traditionally, scientists would record the data they had observed in handwritten notes. Whiledrug discovery has changed over the years为了更频繁地使用计算机和虚拟数据，研究人员获取数据的精确方式几乎肯定与他的同事不同，即使是在同一设施内。相比之下，数据捕获的自动化可以确保每次都记录下精确的细节，包括温度、湿度、时间等重要指标。这使得将来更容易完整地重现这个实验。

Data stewardship

At present, many labs store and share data via USB sticks or other hardware. The naming and sharing conventions can differ significantly from institution to institution – and even from scientist to scientist within the same institution. By using automation to track and store all data online in one, centralised location that is accessible to everyone wherever they are in the world, researchers can greatly facilitate collaboration on projects, thus leading to better outcomes and expediteddrug discovery and developmentprocesses.