Speed and accuracy are two critical factors in in vivo research, often serving as competitive differentiators. Unfortunately, increases in one area usually mean sacrifices in the other. Enter automation- when used properly, automation can provide your lab with a host of benefits ranging from the aforementioned improvements in both speed and accuracy to increased reproducibility and efficiency.
RockStep’s in vivo research management platform, Climb, offers several time-saving automation features to improve workflows in animal model research; benefiting your entire team and organization as a whole.
Animal Management
Climb integrates with scanners and animal identification software such as RapID, reducing error by automatically flagging when an incorrect animal is scanned for a task. Flags can also be set up to automatically alert staff if values such as bodyweights are out of range, ensuring potential animal welfare issues are identified immediately.
Climb allows animals to be added, housed, and assigned tasks in bulk. Once entered into Climb, animal cage cards can be printed directly from the application, streamlining colony maintenance workflows. Climb also helps veterinary staff with animal care–offering real-time alerts via an embedded messaging system that can forward to the user’s email and mobile phone.
Study Design
Studies can be designed quickly and accurately with the reusable protocol templates available in Climb. After scheduling an experiment, Climb will automatically set task due dates and times according to the selected experimental protocol. With one click of a button, study leads can allocate resources to complete study tasks like collecting test samples or recording observations. Day-to-day change management is no longer a headache- reassigning tasks and altering study specifications is simple and automatically reflected through the entire study.
Climb also can also automatically use previously recorded data, such as the most recent body weight, to perform real-time calculations- saving your team from having to manually calculate dosing.
Study Execution
Research associates can confidently execute study tasks with speed and accuracy. Climb readily integrates with most modern hardware, like scales and calipers, ensuring the accurate capture and recording of experimental data. As part of our commitment to an open research ecosystem, Climb also integrates with other software systems like LabVoice’s digital hands-free lab assistant.
Data Harmonization and Aggregation
Climb helps ensure your data is useful and ready to be used for visualization and analysis by automatically harmonizing and aggregating it in the cloud.
Using Climb’s robust vocabularies and data entry specifications, researchers can ensure that all captured data is cohesive, uses your organization’s standard terminology, and is in the correct format- eliminating costly and tedious data clean-up efforts. Time spent finding, organizing, and compiling disparate spreadsheets and notes is also eliminated as all data is easily accessible with robust search and filter tools, ready to be exported for visualization or analysis.
According to RockStep Solutions surveys, over 70% of pre-clinical research and development organizations continue to rely on legacy data entry and research management systems. The benefits of automation are well-known in other industries and other areas of the drug discovery pipeline and it is past time in vivo research starts to reap the same benefits.
Using Climb to automate repeatable research functions, increasing operational efficiencies and research accuracy, gives our customers a competitive edge in the rapidly advancing pre-clinical research field.
Ready to see what Climb can do for your organization’s in vivo research? Schedule a demo today!
