[momojo]

I disagreed, then re-read your post, then re-read the OP, and now I've come full circle to apologize; I think you make a fair point.

I work at a biotech. We spent who knows how much time and money trying to develop a 'lab technician bot' to automate one of our critical assays. Turns out, a 6-figure machine still isn't as economical as my coworker Y, one of the veteran lab-technicians. Sure she takes the occasional sick day but even at our volume (and we do industrial-level, multiple clients batched into a single assay pass) it won't be economical to replace her for a very long time (if we even reach that scale).

[robertlagrant]

Absolutely. I worked at a gene sequencing company and I led the software side of making a robotic product[0] to automate the 20-30 minutes of sample preparation time. It's great for lots of uses, but for anything outside the exact thing it automates, it doesn't cover it. For that you need an expert human.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20250919140427/https://nanoporet...

[momojo]

Thanks for the story! Was this company similar to Plasmidsaurus in terms of industrial-scale sequencing?

[robertlagrant]

No problem! It was probably the most fun product I've ever had the pleasure of leading the software dev of.

The company is one of the few in the world that makes gene sequencing technology - actual chemistry, biologics, protocols, hardware and software. Plasmidsaurus is a customer[0] - they use our devices and have built an incredibly successful service on top of them!

[0] https://nanoporetech.com/blog/plasmidsaurus-redefine-the-gol...

[michaelnovati]

Cool!!