Revolutionizing Life Sciences: The Impact of Automation and AI

Quality. Speed. Cost. Resilience. Security. Transparency. Life sciences companies are challenged to improve everything, everywhere, all at once. Patients’ lives depend on it.

Add to the mix regulatory and competitive pressures — onshoring, supply chain disruptions, shrinking margins, and new medication modalities that range from personalized medicines to gene therapies and injectables — as well as shortages of skilled workers, and the hurdles stack up.

The life sciences industry is undergoing a transformation, driven by automation and artificial intelligence (AI) that are reshaping everything from pharmaceutical manufacturing to diagnostics. Cutting-edge technologies like autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and advanced motion control are enabling new levels of efficiency and precision across the sector. Companies — such as Eurotech, HEIDENHAIN, and Omron Automation — are deploying these innovations to help life sciences companies navigate evolving business demands, streamline operations, and stay competitive in a rapidly changing landscape. 

The state of life sciences automation

Automation and AI solutions are enabling pharmaceutical manufacturers to produce reliable and high-quality supplies of medications, including more types of drugs per facility in smaller batches as the industry moves to more personalized medicine. Sensors and equipment data integration create visibility across factory floors to reduce downtime, enable continuous manufacturing, and enhance decision-making. The use of robots — in both traditional and collaborative applications — is improving ergonomics and safety for workers and streamlining manual processes for operations efficiency. And in medical facilities, automated assay devices enable healthcare providers to deliver time-critical clinical lab results, even in remote areas, for faster treatment and better patient care.

Revolutionizing pharmaceutical manufacturing with automation and AI

Prior to 2020, the pharmaceutical industry was slow to adopt digital transformation solutions, due in large part to regulatory challenges. Other sectors, however, more readily embraced digital technologies through Industry 4.0, says Lindsay Hilbelink, global strategic marketing and product management leader for pharmaceuticals and healthcare at Eurotech, which offers cybersecure hardware and integrated software for demanding environments, including the life sciences industry.

That all changed when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Worker shortages led to a greater need for automation. A pandemic-induced global supply chain crisis resulted in drug shortages, which led governments to reduce regulatory barriers, encouraging the life sciences industry to adopt advanced manufacturing technology more quickly. Legislation incentivized onshoring, where products that had been manufactured overseas are now made locally, and continuous manufacturing, in which a product is made from start to finish in one location. Ongoing global pressure to lower drug prices focused the industry on finding efficiencies to reduce costs.

Pharmaceutical processes are exacting — if even one step goes wrong, a whole batch of medicine is ruined. In fact, manufacturing quality issues are the major reason for drug shortages, which have reached an all-time high. Hilbelink recommends taking a holistic approach to data, automation, and AI. “Not only can you catch problems sooner, but you can also fix problems faster, because you already have the data, rather than trying to recreate it,” she says.

By integrating data from sensors and equipment across a facility, a smart pharmaceutical factory uses automation, analytics and AI applications to achieve real-time insight into each step in the process and each batch of medication. AI in pharma also keeps factories humming through predictive maintenance, which orders parts and schedules maintenance work at a convenient time before equipment fails. “We’re seeing OEMs drive the development of platforms for equipment optimization, predictive maintenance, and worker assistance to help bridge various gaps,” Hilbelink adds.

It’s not easy to create a base layer of data integration to connect all the systems, though. As Hilbelink explains, diverse protocols and connectivity types create challenges, and the data needs to be synchronized across a manufacturing plant. Syntegon, a leading provider of processing and packaging technology, used Eurotech’s integrated hardware and software to create a digital infrastructure capable of capturing and standardizing data from across the manufacturing floor. From this platform they launched Synexio, a cloud-based solution that provides such transparency to pharmaceutical manufacturers today — monitoring equipment at scale and improving factory efficiency.

Autonomous mobile robots provide flexible process integration

In practice, islands of beneficial automation in the life sciences industry often do not work together as much as they should. For example, many companies have efficient but isolated automated processes in an environment where workers move supplies from one machine to the next. Facilities lacks the holistic information systems and traceability that are key to realizing the full benefit of Pharma 4.0 digital transformation, explains Andrew Gill, strategic account manager for life sciences at Omron Automation, an industrial automation partner that creates, sells, and services fully integrated automation solutions in many industries.

Flexible material handling processes and data integration are key to achieving continuous manufacturing, personalized medicine, and business agility in the life sciences industry. A flexible, dynamic, and modular automated process that can be reconfigured easily revolutionizes the moving of supplies and products-in-production from one instrument or workstation to the next. Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) do this, taking the labor out of such transitions in a flexible way, Gill adds.

In life sciences laboratories, AMRs deliver materials to workers, remove and dispose of waste, and transfer materials to other workstations and labs, replacing manual processes in which a worker, often with a PhD, pushes a cart between labs several times a day. AMRs with container systems and sample hotels (shown) do this well. “Mobile robotics has the capability to completely automate repetitive and manual tasks, providing life sciences companies and research institutions with more time to focus on analysis and make groundbreaking discoveries. Advancements in AMRs have overcome many previous challenges such that they can now work in confined spaces, avoid spills, and ensure that samples are stored properly at all times,” he says.

Furthermore, AMRs can be integrated with other technologies to interact with their environment without human intervention. Specifically designed for the efficient and reliable transportation of labware, these mobile robots incorporate integrated sample storage and a robotic arm for enhanced functionality.

In addition, mobile robots do more than follow a prescribed path. They make decisions about how to get from point A to point B. They use smart vision in pharmaceutical quality control to sort mixed batches of pipette and determine if a vial is good or bad based on liquid level, turbidity, and color, Gill says.

As Gill points out, often the best automation solution is a hybrid solution in which humans and mobile robots work together. Mobile robots enable skilled personnel to focus their efforts on tasks that require human dexterity and decision-making, while robots do the heavy-lifting and eliminate the toil of mundane tasks such as cleaning, sorting, and delivering pipettes. Few life sciences companies today make such complete use of autonomous technologies as to implement total lights out manufacturing. But more will in the future as greenfield factories are designed—a sure example of how automation may revolutionize the life sciences industry. By contrast, a lights-out-overnight lab, where robots run analyses and move microtiter plates among instruments after work hours, is a more realistic goal for most life sciences laboratories today, he says.

Three groups in the life sciences industry are setting a foundation of industry standards for implementing self-guided AMRs as well as other automation and AI-driven technology. Gill participates in a global community, called SLAS, of scientists focused on using technology to achieve scientific objectives. In addition, a consortium of top life sciences companies, called SiLA, collaborates to set data exchange standards focused on device behavior. A third organization, the BioPhorum Operations Group, brings together the global biopharmaceutical and device industries to collaborate on industry-changing initiatives. One of its goals is to improve the risk-reward profile of technology development.

Precise measurement and fluid handling enable new applications in the life sciences

Automation and AI have made possible new types of applications in the life sciences industry. Automated equipment now performs fluid handling, microfluidics, and fluid analysis tasks well, says Jonathan Dougherty, business development manager at HEIDENHAIN, a component supplier of motion feedback solutions for life sciences applications. He notes that small-scale assay devices that measure minute amounts of a substance in a bodily fluid are revolutionizing clinical diagnostics in remote medical locations where companies struggle to find laboratory workers. “Lab samples sent far away for processing can take a long time to return results. Automation is filling the gap with tabletop assay devices that healthcare providers use locally. A single lab technician can oversee many devices operating at once,” he says.

In addition, electro-mechanical measurement devices called encoders now perform high-precision tasks, enabling new applications for automation and AI. These devices measure motion with such precision, accuracy, and redundancy that they are revolutionizing the life sciences industry, says Graham Stuart, business development specialist for automation at HEIDENHAIN. Advanced encoders — specifically rotary encoders, angle encoders, and linear encoders — and new types of scanning technology deliver medical radiation more precisely and improve the speed and quality of imaging for more comfortable cancer screening for patients and better visualization for healthcare providers. The encoders also enable surgical robots operated by a surgeon — in person or remotely — to deliver less invasive surgery. Further, the encoders enable precision machining in life sciences applications, such as the manufacturing of knee replacements, he says.

Very high accuracy motion control systems also enable automated pipetting machines, blood analyzers, and similar equipment, as well as high-content screening for gene analysis. Smaller sample sizes delivered to tinier spaces by high-precision automation technology require less sample material, conserve reagent, and reduce contamination to produce lower-cost, more accurate results.

The availability of massive amounts of precise data from encoders and other sensors in life sciences laboratories and factories in turn feeds AI systems, which produce insight into real-time trends.

In these ways and more, advancements in components, AMRs, analytics, and AI are working together to revolutionize the life sciences industry.