Dave Jackson 19 min

Gaining Efficiency with Forensic Automation Solutions


At the intersection of efficiency and effectiveness is productivity. Automation in the forensic laboratory workflow results in reliable and reproducible results in less time and with less effort. Learn how the move to automation on the Applied Biosystems HID NIMBUS Presto streamlines the forensics workflow, minimizes time at the workbench and gives you more time to focus on other aspects of forensics work.



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[Music]

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Hello and welcome to Pleasanton California, the home of Thermophisher

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Scientific Human Identification.

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My name's Dave Jackson and I'm the Senior Manager of Application Scientists

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here in North America.

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It's my distinct pleasure to be able to show you around in here today

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at some of the wonderful things that happen in this facility

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and eventually we'll look together at the automation solutions that perhaps you

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want to consider

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for your lab to help make it more efficient and provide a better workflow for

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your solution.

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Let's take a look inside so come on with me as we head into this facility.

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[Music]

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As we start to take a look around this incredible facility,

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first I want to take you into what must be the coolest,

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if not nerdiest elevator that I've ever seen.

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[Music]

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So for decades you've known Thermophisher Scientific to be the leader

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in HID workflows and technology and here I am at our facility in Pleasanton

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California.

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Looking at what Thermophisher does on a big scale in research and development

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and

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testing of all sorts of technology that might not right now be usable in the H

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ID community,

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but we know as we all work together for the betterment of what you're trying to

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do in your lab

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that one day some of what goes on in these labs could help to make you and your

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work much more

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efficient and much more effective. It's a real pleasure for me to be here with

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a couple of our

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team members who have been integral in the development of the IDIN-MBS-Prestco

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automated

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workflow solution for your laboratories. Han Lee is our senior product manager

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of automation

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within the HID group. Welcome Han. Thank you. It's great to have you here. Glad

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to be here.

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Listen you've had this on your mind for quite some time and I would just love

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for you to share

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with us and what it is that has driven that passion for you. Sure first and

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foremost in terms

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of a Thermophisher we've been a market leader for over 30 years and we feel we

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've been listening

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to our customers understanding you know their bottlenecks their their issues,

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their rub blocks

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and a lot of it has to do with the manual process and the workflow and we feel

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that with the solution

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that we have in hand which is the NIMMBS-Prestco it will give them time back

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and alleviate a lot

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of the bottlenecks that they're currently experiencing and it's a true walk

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away system for them where

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they could focus on data analysis which you know is very important and yeah.

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Except what is it about the platform that gives them that walk away ability?

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So we have automated the purification and extraction process for them by

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combining the

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kingfisher, Presto and the NIMMBS liquid handling system from Hamilton having

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two market leaders

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combining to work together and collaborate to provide the solution we feel that

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this will be

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very ideal for our customers. And what kind of time savings will using this

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workflow provide for

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each of our partners in the forensic community? Great question and up to 90

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samples a lab-tech

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process that in less than 90 minutes. 90 minutes and it's fully walk awayable?

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Yes it is. Excellent,

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that's great to hear. Now listen I know that not just having the passion for

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what we have right now

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but in the future as well what does this provide a platform for when we're

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looking forward to

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automated solutions? So our vision first is the first step in in providing a

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solution for

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the extraction purification. We are looking forward as well to address the

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other workflows like

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quantification and application CE setup. So our intent is to provide a workflow

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solution that

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would cover the whole work. Han thank you very much for letting us take a look

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around today and

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for you sharing with us what's been on your mind and all of your efforts

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regarding the ID NIMMBS

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Presto. And to give us a little bit more information about the nitty-gritty

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ways to use the ID NIMMBS

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Presto it's a real pleasure to introduce Leo Lai who's our senior automation

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specialist based

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here in Pleasanton California within our HID R&D group. Leo welcome. Nice to

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meet you. Leo it's my

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understanding that you are the one who's put a lot of effort and energy into

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making this system

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user-friendly. I wonder if you can just share with me a little bit about what

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is behind that.

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Sure so we designed essentially a graphical user interface to guide a user

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through our workflow.

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It is a very streamlined so the user doesn't have to be an expert in the ROAC

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system

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and they can actually run the workflow without any worries. Right and what

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portions of the workflow

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does the user get to select between when they're using your interface? Sure so

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the graphical interface

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provides a lot of different parameters for a lot the user to modify that

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includes in kind of input

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labbers where output labbers as well as the different volumes as well as work

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less ingestions and

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barcode checking and reagent checking as well. And is it pretty intuitive as

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far as walking the

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user through each one of those parameters and selections? Yeah so we actually

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also designed a

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guidance option where the user is able to double check their deck layouts to

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make sure that they

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have put the correct labware onto the deck and the guide system essentially

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allowed the user just to

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build out the deck step by step and check the volume of the reagents as well as

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the tip usage on

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the system. Wow so just to make sure I've got it right you can choose within

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parameters of

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plastics of methods you can automate the run from that GUI as well set it going

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and then walk

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away is that right? That's correct so the user allowed to choose different

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plastics based on the

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input parameters so for the input it would be the tipo plates tubes or our spin

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plate and the output

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parameter would be our tubes tipo plates and PCR plate. And just for my benefit

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do you really need

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to be a software expert or a computer expert of any type to be able to operate

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this platform?

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No not at all you can simply follow the graphical user face and operate the

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robot

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and it's completely walk away plug and play. I'm thrilled to hear that because

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it sounds like

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something I might even be able to use. Yeah excellent well listen thank you so

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much for sharing with

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us what's been your passion and driven you to develop this GUI interface to

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make it easy

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for all of us users to enjoy this platform. Yeah no problem well it's been

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wonderful to hear

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from our two experts who've been so involved with the development of the ID Nim

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bus Presto workflow

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solution for automating what you would have ordinarily been able to do manually

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within your

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laboratory. I hope you've enjoyed listening to the background that has driven

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them to provide

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this solution for you so that we can provide you with a more efficient and

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effective way to do

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the processes that you need within your forensic HID workflow. I'm going to

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take you into our

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demonstration room now so that you can take a closer look at the ID Nimbus

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Presto at work so

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let me mask up so that we keep things clean in here and on my left hand side

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you see the instruments

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that we are talking about today this is the demonstration of the ID Nimbus

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Presto that is a

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fully automated solution for lab work systems that you would do manually in

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your workflow that puts

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things into real ease of use by integrating our Kingfisher Presto module in the

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left hand side of

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the instrument with a deck layout that can do all of those manual processes for

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in this instance

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DNA extraction and purification so by taking a look at this in action along

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with the GUI that

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lets you operate it we're going to show you throughout this demonstration what

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is available

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through the use of ID Nimbus Presto in your laboratory.

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So as we take a closer look at this instrument for this demo today we're going

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to just highlight a

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few of the areas that it's capable of performing in not everything by any means

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because it can do

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so much more than you're seeing here in this demo but really as it sets itself

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up this instrument

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initiates itself in the deck with a Nimbus portion of it and the Kingfisher

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Presto area

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looking at the deck itself we see the areas for the tips and the tube racks and

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everything else

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that goes on to hold the plates in position where you need them to be so that

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everything can be

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set and you can walk away and you can spend that time more capably and intellig

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ently using it

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for what you have decided you need to spend your time on.

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And the Kingfisher Presto is really what makes this incredibly fast and

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efficient and effective

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for you and as we watch it do everything that it does as it picks up and it rot

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ates and puts in

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the right position the plates that it's processing for your DNA extraction and

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your purification

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and then utilizes the bead binding technology that really makes this efficient

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you can see just how

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wonderfully integrated this entire automated platform of the ID Nimbus Presto

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is. Of course the

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transferring of the lysate and the mixing and the the particle additions in

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this deep well platform

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is evident for you to see as you watch this instrument at work and not only

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does it do

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that in the extraction the purification portion of this workflow but it also

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helps with the washing

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step and the purification step of your DNA extraction and then finally of

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course once that's finished

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you want to be able to allude to your DNA that is now extracted and purified

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into whatever medium

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that you want to use it in so whether you want to send your illusion back to

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tubes or you want to

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send it into plates for the next step in your process this allows you to choose

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that capability

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and so as you're watching this demo here today we hope you can see all the

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different functional

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areas that could enhance your efficiency and your effectiveness with the DNA

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extraction and

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purification that we're seeing before us in your laboratory workflow and just

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remember that it does

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this in anything up to 96 samples at a time and rather than just a few or a

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small batch you can

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choose anything up to 96 samples to do this entire workflow with before you

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need to come back to it

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to retrieve your samples that's time well spent doing whatever else you've

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decided you needed to do

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one of the differentiating features that we're really proud of with this

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automated workflow

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platform the iDee Nimbus Presto is our graphical user interface otherwise known

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as a GUI which

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makes it really easy for the user to do what they require with this platform

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and in order to help

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us see that a little more closely we have one of our senior automation

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specialists with us to show

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you around the GUI and that would be Leo from the desktop we can see the icon

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for the application

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we'll go ahead and double click for the application to start once the

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application started you can see

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a list of methods we also have the option to scan in our catalog number to

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determine which

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method you will be running for here we see the profiler and as well as the bta

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methods we're

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going to go ahead and choose the profiler method the running is automatically

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generated based on

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the method you selected as well as the date time we're going to here we're

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going to enter user name

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and then go ahead and press continue on the next interface we can see the

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different input and

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output that's user allowed to modify we're going to go ahead and unlock the

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settings there will be a

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notification to prompt you that the parameters will be modified we're going to

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go ahead and click

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continue from the input lab where we we have three different options from the

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tubes deep well

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plates and the spin plate we can go ahead and choose the deep well plate for

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the input and

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output plate is also tubes deep well plate where the PCR plate for here we're

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going to choose the

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tubes we also can modify our different sample volume input from 300 to 500 as

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well as our

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illusion volume of by dragging this by dragging the input and we can choose

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from 20 to 290

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for as our output there's also run settings that we're we are allowed to choose

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from we have the

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low worklists where we can automatically generate our worklists for a different

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amount of samples

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and we also have two different options one of them is a scan check here for the

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run settings where

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the barkless scanning function will be used to compare to either the worklist

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that's loaded

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where would be inputted for the automatically generated worklists we also have

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the option to

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reagent track what it will do is it will essentially use the liquid detection

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to detect the amount of

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reagents that's in the container so once everything looks good we can go ahead

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and

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lock our parameter options and hit continue so on this page we can see the

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different

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deck layout to confirm that we have loaded our lab work correctly as well as

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the different volume

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the volume indicator indicates that different reagent volume that needs to be

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loaded on the deck

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this is a feature that we implemented to greatly visualize how much volume you

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needed to load on

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to different containers and you can also hover over the different positions to

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see the different

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lab work that's required on the deck and we also have the tip requirement area

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where it indicates

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how many tips will need to be needed to be loaded we also have visualization of

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the different

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container position of the different reagents that need to be on the deck

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on the side here the camera icon allows me to see the real-life image of the

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actual deck if the

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picture representation was confusing we can also choose to look at the real-

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life version of the deck

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there's also a press the icon where we're allowed to modify our press the zero

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number if needed

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also one of the features that we implemented is the guidance mode the user is

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able to use the

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guidance mode to help them set up the deck step by step the guidance mode will

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display the different

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steps needed to set up the entire deck we can see that the system helper is

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showing us a

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the steps that needed to perform such as turning on the nimbus turning on the

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press to ensure

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initialization and to load on to the different lab work that needed to be on

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the deck

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the different tips and once the user gone through all these steps to load on

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the deck

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there will be a finish button where the user can press once the user press the

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finish button it will say that the guidance mode is performed and then we can

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continue on to

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running the control software so by pressing continue the application will

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launch the run control software

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and once the data is transferred the launch control software will prompt the

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user on how many

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tips are needed to be loaded press okay on the tips that are loaded and this is

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the

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a part where the user is able to start a method and walk away what we've gotten

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to right now

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really excites me this is our hid specific portion of the workflow and and as i

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get to this part

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of what we can see in our laboratories it's really like a forensic genetics

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museum

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and and we see here right on the very first instrument that genesis are the

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foundation of

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capillary electrophoresis genetic analyzes the 310 which many of you i'm sure

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will recognize

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from your time training and doing casework in your labs wherever that might be

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and of course next

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to that on the end of the bench is the 31 30 series which was a step up and

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really taught us that

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we were folks who were listening to what was needed for the workflows in your

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laboratories

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to make things better more efficient and your work product more effective too

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but listen it

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gets better when we get to this next window here we see on the right hand side

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some of the old

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workhorses the 9700 thermal cyclers which i'm sure many of you still have in

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use in your facilities

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today but as we spin around and have a look at the 3500 genetic analyzers here

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on the left hand side

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that again is just another step up in our response to what you needed as a lab

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to provide what you

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have been expecting from us at thermofisher scientific from to make your work

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easier more

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effective and more efficient now with all of this instrumentation with all of

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the chemistry

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with the automation that we are presenting to you as well throughout this demo

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we also want you to

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know that our work at thermofisher scientific doesn't stop there we want to

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partner with you

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further in offering our services through our hid professional services group

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known as hps to come

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in and to work with you in your lab to install validate fully a workflow that

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will help you out

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the best so that when we leave you're ready to run with all that you've ever

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imagined to make your

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lab the best efficient and effective one possible well folks thank you very

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much for joining us

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here today i hope that you've enjoyed all that you've seen in the demo and the

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little tour around

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our facilities and if you've got any questions please feel free to reach out to

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one of your

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thermofisher scientific representatives and they'll answer whatever they can

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that's caught your

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eye during this time and stay right where you are because following this we're

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going to be here

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to answer all of the questions that you might want to throw at us live so thank

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you again for joining

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us and goodbye for now

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[Music]

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