Thermo Fisher Scientific Brings Amazon Alexa into the Lab to Optimize Scientist Productivity Through Hands-Free Experiences

Scientists and lab managers are challenged to accelerate their productivity, optimize processes, and prevent errors while performing wet lab research. Thermo Fisher Scientific (Thermo Fisher) is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) tools to equip labs to aid scientists and lab managers in this work.

Thermo Fisher is unifying traditional wet lab workspaces and computational space through new data-driven workflows. The company is beginning to equip lab instruments with Amazon Alexa for Business, which enables operators to use voice commands to direct the instruments to perform a requested action or respond with important information. Operators can use private skills unique to the instrument, such as opening and closing a tray, as well as public functionalities, such as timers and reminders. This helps lab researchers enhance their productivity by enabling them to perform actions hands-free and automate portions of their normally manual workflows.

Using AWS and Amazon Alexa, Thermo Fisher helps its customers improve their processes and reduce errors within their research labs. Building with Alexa Voice Service (AVS) enables users to access voice assistant capabilities with the support of AVS APIs, hardware kits, software tools, and documentation. As a result, Thermo Fisher can easily integrate Amazon Alexa for Business into its instruments and give its customers a hands-free experience in the lab. “AVS will fundamentally change the customer experience for scientists in dramatic ways. It will impact everything from operating a lab device hands-free to overall lab planning and beyond,” says Sean Baumann, vice president of information technology applications and connectivity at Thermo Fisher.

Alexa-enabled lab equipment is just one of the new additions to the Thermo Fisher Device Connect platform, built on AWS, which helps customers acquire, organize, and analyze data and quickly provide results. The Connect platform offers software-as-a-service scientific capabilities, including instrument integrations, monitoring and control, configuration, data storage, and analytics applications. “AWS services provide us with agility and capacity for scale and make sure our platform is compliant. They enable us to evolve our architecture over time and meet our evolving customer demands,” says Baumann. The platform uses AWS IoT Core capabilities, Amazon API Gateway, and Amazon DynamoDB to enable researchers to secure access to instrument status, remote commands, and analytics options from web or mobile devices.