Toby Winchester

Welcome everybody to the latest Voices of Sample Management.

Today, I have another esteemed guest, Neil Benn from, well, previously rack scanner fandom.

He's just finished working for all those companies, but he has a lot of knowledge in the area. So, we shall be talking about barcoded tubes, rack scanners, etc.

Neil, could you introduce yourself?

Neil Benn

Hello, my name’s, as you just said, Neil Benn, I used to be the founder and managing director of Ziath, which was acquired by Azenta Inc, a couple of years ago.

Previous to that, I worked in sample management lab automation for companies such as Cambridge Antibody Technology, which is AstraZeneca, a start up in Germany, the Max Planck Institute and GlaxoSmithKline.

I've got about 30 years experience of tubes and rack scanners and sample management.

Toby Winchester

So definitely the expert to talk to. You’ve seen it all.

Neil Benn

Yeah, yeah. From meat freezers in the car park to a highly automated systems costing 10s of millions of pounds.

Toby Winchester

Excellent. But you're the person to quiz on the world of sample management and tubes.

So I suppose, you know, I sort of remember, you know, I've also been in the industry for quite a long time, these strange tubes with 2D barcodes on the bottom, before we'd all used 1D barcodes which we saw in shops and things.

How did that come about and how long ago we talking?

Neil Benn

So, at the very start, if we go back 30 years, you've obviously got the 96 well rack tubes that you you're used to seeing. 30 years ago you couldn't actually get them filled with tubes. So, my very first job, is I had pallet load of empty racks and the pallet loads of tubes. And I just filled them in.

And then the first innovation which you could buy them prefilled, so that was great. And then you had the 96 tubes. Now, if you've got 96 tubes with chemical compounds, what we had in those days, that rack is actually extremely expensive. The amount of time for medicinal chemists to put in to make their samples is huge.

And if you dropped it, that's it, you're gone.

And, and there were big penalties and I was ever so careful to not drop it. And then the first thing to happen is people started labelling the coordinates on the bottom of the tube, A1, B1, C1 and so on. So that means we did drop it, you could at least pick them up and look at the bottom of the tubes and put them all back in again.

And then as time went on, a couple of companies at the time, was Matrix and Micronic, both about the same time launched 2D barcode in tubes, which is around about 20/25 years ago.

And the idea was obviously is that you've got a tiny barcode lasered on the bottom of a tube.

And so if you can read those barcodes, you can put the tubes back in the rack. And the really it was about being able to put the tubes back in the rack.

The concept of tracking it with the barcodes wasn't really developed. At the time, this was only available to very large companies because the racks were extremely expensive.

And so they started coming and they were targeting the big pharmaceutical companies which in the 90s were extremely rich such as Glaxo, AstraZeneca, and so on and obviously Pfizer.

And then they started coming into what at the time was compound management.

The thing that's quite interesting is, I won't say which company, but one company had what's called a data matrix barcode, which is open and you can get it everywhere. The other company had their own proprietary barcode, only they could read it.

Toby Winchester

Right.

Neil Benn

So that meant that if you bought their one, you were stuck with their tubes and their readers forevermore.

The other company that didn't have their own proprietary barcode did far better.

So at the start, the proprietary barcode weren't deduced, but they didn't last more than a couple of years as customers were too switched on to not lock themselves into proprietary barcodes.

Toby Winchester

Right, yeah, because they may want to share them with other companies and universities et cetera.

Neil Benn

Now, as times gone on, the number of manufacturers of these tubes is ballooned, there’s now at least 12, probably 20 different manufacturers of tubes, that's brought the price down.

Which has meant that more people can read the tubes, can get hold of the tubes, more people can use them.

And in addition the concept of biobanking appeared, which grew out of the concept of personalised medicine. And then biobankers, compound management people were using one or two million tubes at the most really.

Biobankers, the big ones were using 10 times that.

Toby Winchester

Right

Neil Benn

One set of biobanking meant that those numbers of tubes went through the roof. And so that's depressed that price. And if you're buying quantity, you can get a rack full of tubes for about £50, in some cases, 30.

Toby Winchester

OK, depending on the tube, probably, but yeah…

Neil Benn

It's depending on the tube. Yeah, and also the quantity. If you only want to buy 1000, they're not going do it. But if you want to buy over a million, then they will compete and get their price lower.

Toby Winchester

Yes. Yeah. Wow. OK, cool. Thank you.

I remember some of that thing. I also remember Pfizer, we had a laser etcher for the same problem that, you know, the side of the tube was etched with where it's positioned in the rack was. And yeah, yes, they were impossible to read the laser etchings, it wasn't that useful.

Neil Benn

The ones on the bottom weren’t much easier either, and they scratched off if you weren't careful.

Toby Winchester

Yes, exactly, yes. Less than ideal.

Fortunately, we've moved to a better place. So, are they all Data Matrix still or are there combinations of those?

Neil Benn

Yeah, at the time there's two mainstream 2D barcodes you can get, QR codes and Data Matrix codes.

You've obviously got to shrink these codes down really, really small. At the time, you couldn't shrink a QR code down small enough to get it on the bottom of the tube.

So everyone started making data matrix codes. And it's the same in the electronics industry. Everyone uses data matrix codes, which has meant that all the people that made readers tuned them to data matrix codes.

Toby Winchester

Okay.

Neil Benn

You can actually now shrink a QR code down low enough. It's called a micro QR code. And I have seen some people try to launch them. Problem is, they don't work with any of the readers.

So, very quickly you go and use data matrix code again. So, we're kind of locked into data matrix because of this. And the micro QR codes theoretically should be easier to read, but no one's going to reprogramme their devices to read micro QR codes unless there's a very strong reason to do it, which there isn’t.

Toby Winchester

No. OK, cool.

And you know, while we're on the subject of QR codes, you know, is there an advantage to that?

You know, it can take you to a website or something like that rather than…

Neil Benn

Seriously, no. I mean, the QR code holds data just like a data matrix code does. The QR code is actually easier to read than a data matrix code. When you've done it for Data Matrix code and you're actually making a reader for it, you look for that pattern.

Toby Winchester

Right.

Neil Benn

There's an L shape basically.

The problem is, if you look around the room you're in, you can see a lot of L shapes everywhere.

Toby Winchester

Indeed, yes, they’re all over the rack, for instance, and things like that.

Neil Benn

Exactly, and that's, that's called the finder pattern, the micro QR code. When you look at a QR code, you'll see it's got a box surrounded by a white box surrounded by a larger black box. And that's the final pattern for micro QR code.

You're not going to see that anywhere easily. If you look around the room again, and it's very rare to see that. So, a QR code should be easier to read because the finder pattern is more unique for that.

So, if you were to make tubes now, and you were to invent 2D barcode tubes and there's no precedence, you would use a micro QR code

Toby Winchester

Right.

Neil Benn

But apart from that, there's no basic inherent difference between the two of them.

Toby Winchester

Yeah, but we've got 25 years of data matrix tubes. So, yes…

Neil Benn  

So, someone's going to have to bribe a rack scanner or pay a rack scanner company enormous amount of money to get them to bother writing micro QR code stuff, before they launch their tube.

Toby Winchester

Yeah. That's a lot of work. Yeah. So, I suppose, you know, you you've hinted at, you know, micro QR codes are easier to read. But why is it so hard to read 96 tubes at the bottom of a rack?

Or maybe let's start even easier, single tube on a single tube reader/rack.

Neil Benn  

So, the first bit is that when you put a code on the bottom of the tube, it's actually really hard to get it perfect.

If you're lasers slightly too powerful, instead of a square, you'll burn a dot. If your laser is not powerful enough, instead of square you'll burn a diamond.

Then you’ve got to get positioned very very tightly in that area. So, then what it means when you read it, it should be getting lines and squares. You don't always get lines and squares, and sometimes you will. Sometimes the lasering went perfectly, sometimes it didn't.

There’s not a denigration on the manufacturing of the tubes, it's just life, for that. So, that means that you've got to take into account the fact that the laser might not have been perfect on that shot.

The next thing is you can get reflections back on the bottom of the tube and you can get reflections on the light. I've already talked about that L shape issue.

My favourite one was someone once, so you look for, it's varying different ways of doing it, but you can look for an L shape and you can look for patterns of white and black to determine where the barcode is.

They have one person who put their hand, which was bandaged for some reason, on the top of the rack, scanned it and it got confused because you couldn't work out it was bandage or barcode.

So essentially, in actual fact, finding the barcode is the harder, bit.

Once you’ve found it, reading is quite difficult and that's why Ziath, actually did an AI issue for that. It’s AI that actually works. It's not going say to make petroleum spaghetti or whatever the latest sponsor is…

Toby Winchester

Take over of the world or whatever.

Neil Benn  

Yeah, exactly. It just recognises where the barcode is, but finding it is actually quite hard to do.

Then if you think about it, if you've got 96 tubes, it’s the old adage of a watched kettle takes much longer to boil. If it takes longer than about a second, you notice when you're standing in front of it, which means you've got to image and decode these in about a second.

If you take more than three seconds, it's going really affect someone.

And if you're working in a high throughput environment, we've got to scan 100 racks, one second versus 5 seconds, it's a big deal.

You've got to scan them, image them, get the results back in extremely quickly. So, what happens, and everyone does this and I did the same thing, is you start off going this is going to be easy and then after about a year and a half we realise it's not background effects, trying to read them all and so on.

It means it's actually much harder, then what's happened recently, because the number of tubes has gone through the roof, every single tube is made slightly differently.

Toby Winchester

Right.

Neil Benn  

So therefore, even though it is just a data matrix code, some of them are burnt stronger, some of them are burnt greater contrast. Some of them have got the laser turned a bit too high, some of them have got the laser turned a bit too low, some of them the tubes are further down towards the bottom of the rack and some of the higher up.

So that means you've got a wide variety of different racks.

If you're a rack scanner manufacturer, you can't say to someone it works with this, not with that. Back in the old days you could have done that, but now you've got to go up to the customer and say put any standard 96 well rack on and we'll read it.

And as soon as you can't do that, then the customers rightly so says “well, listen, it’s just 96 barcodes. It's just a barcode scanner. Why is it that hard?”

So, essentially, you've got to make it so someone can walk out, no configuration, no messing around and just read any rack off the shelf.

Toby Winchester

And I suppose you're saying it's hard to detect the barcode, but of course, I suspect you know, you're talking about maybe the focal length is changing because of the way the rack is, the tube is, and the and the you know, the type of lasering that's happened to create the QR code, but it could also be the background lighting.

You know, you already talked about the bandaged hand or non bandaged hand, but…

Neil Benn

The light is directly on top of it.

Toby Winchester

Sunlight in the afternoon, not in the morning, all those sorts of things.

Neil Benn

Yeah, when we QC rack scanners and we QC the AI particularly, we have angle poise lamps over it, we even once got a tablet, put the BBC 24 News on top of it, put the tablet face down.

And then had the scanner constantly reading the tubes with the BBC 24 News basically in the background.

Toby Winchester

Changing, the colours and everything else.

Neil Benn

Yeah, exactly.

So, you've got to cope with a wide variety of situations.

Toby Winchester

So the rack scanner manufacturers, how do they cope? Do they have laser focus lenses or do they have clever software?

Neil Benn

There's two different ways of doing it.

But at the very start you use flatbed scanners, anyone that's aged over 40 when I'm talking about here, you used to get your photos developed from the camera roll film and you could put it on the thing on a flatbed scanner, and that would image it by running a bar across very slowly to capture the photo.

Essentially, they produce very good, very high quality photos.

They were the first things that were used by most scanner manufacturers, ourselves included. The problem is they're slow. The benefit is that they give you very, very good quality images.

There's two different types of flatbed scanners. We won’t go into it in great detail, but one of them has got a deeper focus than the other. By focal range, I mean the point between there and there where the camera is still in focus, outside of these two points is not in focus.

And the wider the better for reading barcodes. So, most people use those at the start. One company actually did have a CCD camera, which is kind of like the old style camcorder things, but back in the day that was quite hard to get it working to get the data down and computers couldn't really handle it.

As time went on, the advent of mobile phones means that there's a different type of camera called a CMOS camera, which came about. And so those cameras are much smaller. They need much less power to operate, so this is now most, nearly everybody has camera based readers. Which then comes down to you take two choices.

You can either have lower quality cameras but better quality software, or higher quality cameras, which don't need as good quality software.

The difference is, and this is kind of business term really, is the lower quality cameras are very cheap, the higher quality cameras are very expensive. So, you can take a choice between the way in which you want to do them.

Toby Winchester

OK, Yeah.

Neil Benn

And some people have chosen one, some chose people are chosen the other.

But if you can make the lower quality cameras work, obviously you've got a more sustainable company because your devices can be cheaper.

Toby Winchester

Right, yeah. OK, cool.

Yeah, I mean I was going ask about the photocopier technology, but you've already sort of explained that sort of thing, it’s the quality of the picture that is the important there.

Neil Benn

And they still give very good quality pictures, probably better than a lot of the cameras. But this kind of technology is dying out.

Toby Winchester

Yes.

Neil Benn

And so there is still one available you can buy, which is actually used to scan passports in hotels, they buy that scanner, but it will take quite a long time to scan the rack, so, it's kind of seen as old fashioned now.

Toby Winchester

Yeah, because I remember three position, you had this thing that was built to do A4 type scanning and you had a plastic guide over the top to put three racks on, or four, maybe even four racks.

Neil Benn

When we QC our scanners, we run about 30 odd racks, three times, to QC every single scanner.

There's a very good example of why the flatbed scanners aren't there, because you put it on and it goes tzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
And you’ve got to do that 100 times, it takes half a day to QC that old scanner.

Toby Winchester

Right, yeah.

Neil Benn

So, it's a perfect example of why even though the images are arguably better quality than the cameras you get, it's a perfect example of why they're not really sold anymore, even if you could get hold of the core technology.

Toby Winchester

Yes, Yeah, OK.

A thing of the past, a thing of the past.

So, I suppose, you know, the camera technology improved, you know, what about the lighting?

You know, I remember the advent of LED lighting and all that sort of things suddenly must have improved things.

Neil Benn

Yeah, so if you think when you go to a wedding, right, and they finished the wedding and you go and take the photographs of the bride and the groom, etc, etc, they've got these big blue wide things shining it all down to get the lighting perfect.

It's exactly the same with the rack scanners.

So, the lighting that you have matters a lot. So, what we decided to do when we made our rack scanners, was to throw an enormous quantity of light at the target, target being the bottom of the tube, so that theoretically can block out any background lighting that we've got.

However, the problem is, is that if you shine an enormous amount of light or something that you can get enormous amount of light reflected right back at you.

So, if you're going do this, you've got to position the lights are very, very carefully. And in actual fact, at Ziath, we actually patented how the lights were arranged in that system.

But however you do it, you've got to position the light a lot at the target or you have to have some way of having a longer exposure to balance out the background lighting.

But if you look inside the scanners, the cameras to a large extent are very similar these days. But if you look at the lighting, they've all got very interesting ways in which the lighting arrayed out and a lot of time, effort and design goes into that.

Toby Winchester

Right. OK.

So it’s yeah, not so much about your telephoto lens, more about the flash units that you got when you’ve when you take the picture. Yeah, OK, cool.

Neil Benn

So, turn it on without a rack on and have a look inside.

Be aware, some of the Ziath scanners, it might be like coming out of a cinema, doing this once you finished.

Toby Winchester

Yeah, they are fairly bright.

Yes, yes. And, and I suppose, also a trend is, you know, I remember, you know, the flatbed scanners and scanners used to be, you know, sort of, you know, a chocolate brownie sort of thickness, if you like.

But now, they're more, you see more and more cube shaped, you know they almost seem to have a longer focal length form. Is that the case?

Neil Benn

Yeah, that's, that's the flatbed scanner issue. The flatbed scanners don't need that kind of length. But you've got two issues.

One is the minimum focal length of the camera. So, if you get your mobile phone or your cell phone and try and take a picture of your hand at that distance, you can't do it. The other one is the depth of cone. So essentially if my camera seeing like that, that's the cone I'm making for it.

If you've got the cone a certain distance away, that means this is how much of the focal target you can see.

So, if you're looking at some of the devices, if you've got more than one camera.

We don't necessarily need more than one camera for resolution purposes, you need it because if I can take only half of the rack, it means I can make the thing shorter and shorter and shorter.

Which is why when you see them, they've either got one camera in, or they're very tall, or they've stuck a mirror in to shorten the height of it.

But it's an issue of balancing out the minimum focal depth, how much the target I can see and how many cameras have I got in there.

So, one device has got four cameras in them, I think one doesn't exist anymore, we used to have eight in it.

But they're all doing it to try and get that height down.

The reason is, if you’ve got to stick it on a liquid handler, you don't want a skyscraper on the liquid handler, because it’s going to cause problems.

Toby Winchester

Yeah, yes. Especially if you got a tall set of tubes as well. Yeah.

So, I mean, is there anything else we should mention about, you know, that technology?

What about, you know, what's the best things you can do to keep your rack scanner working well or your tube scanning well?

I suppose the obvious one is you're taking them out of a -80 freezer and the tubes covered in frost. That's not going to help.

Neil Benn

OK, so, for the actual scanner, keep the glass clean.

Anything with water, don't clean it with alcohol or fluids or whatever because essentially you'll end up damaging the surface of the scanner. You wouldn't clean your laptop monitor with detergent or bleach. Don't do it, it’s the same thing. So, keep that glass clean.

The next thing that you want to do for the racks coming out of the freezer is, different companies approach this in different ways, but make sure that you test out any kind of condensation you get on the rack scanner. Now what happens is if you put a cold rack on a warm surface, you get condensation.

Fine. But that's obvious.

If you think you get condensation on the top of the glass, it's fine, just wipe it off a bit of tissue, but you'll get condensation on the inside and because there's no air current, no breeze through there, that condensation can take quite a long time to disappear.

All it is is just the moisture in the box inside the scanner collecting on the bottom of the screen, when it evaporates, it just goes back into the atmosphere.

But you’ve got to find some way of ensuring that doesn't happen, and different companies have got coatings, some have got heaters, some have got fans, which is essentially a heater anyway really, just to try and stop it, but make sure that you bear that in mind.

The other thing to bear in mind is despite what they will tell you, it's not 100% proof.

So, if you're going to scan a lot of -80 racks, take the rack off after its imaged, don't leave it on the scanner, causing the scanner to get colder and colder and colder.

Put it on, do the scan, take it off, and that will make sure the scanner doesn't get down to anywhere close to -80.

The next thing is the ice on the bottom of the rack.

If you’ve got ice covering a barcode, the machine can't read it.

Toby Winchester

Yeah.

Neil Benn

Right. And there's nothing you can do about it. We can get to other alternative technologies later for that, but essentially the machine can't read it.

If you get something and wipe it like that, essentially what you're doing is you're wiping. You're going to leave streaks on the bottom of the of the rack as soon as you finish wiping it. OK, that's not going to work either.

You could heat it up and then the ice would disappear. However, you generally don't really want to be heating up your tubes, because that's why you had them in the -80 in the first place.

Toby Winchester

Yes.

Neil Benn

So, the best thing that we did, and I had this problem when I was in the lab, I was working in Germany, so I went across the road to Netto, which is kind of like Lidl for people who don't live in Germany, and I bought a Bob der Baumeister lunch box, for the people that don’t speak German, that's Bob the Builder, by the way.

Toby Winchester

Okay.

Neil Benn

I got a few tissues, got some lab ethanol, which freezes at -96, and then basically make that damp, tapped the rack onto the ethanol, which melted the ice off the tubes, because you then have a combination of water and ethanol, so it melted it, put it on the scanner and scanned it.

So, essentially, I set up a little station of a Bob der Baumeister ethanol, rack scanner in the middle, and then a Bob der Baumeister drying sponge station at the end, so you went ‘plonk plonk plonk’ on the three scanners.
When I used to work at Ziath, people kept saying why can't you sell that to us?

I’d try to explain that by time I've bought a kids lunch box and stuck it in a box and shipped it to you, it'd be a lot quicker if you just go to the supermarket and buy kids lunch box yourself.

There are some machines now that are taking that to another level. There's one which has got ethanol, an ethanol sponge and a drying sponge are kind of a roller, you roll it along. But it’s the same thing, it’s the same way, getting the ethanol onto the rack is a problem to the rack by dabbing it, not wiping it.

And then you can get the ice off and get it on the scanner.

Toby Winchester

But the ethanol is not going to damage the QR code? Yeah, because…

Neil Benn

No, no, we haven't had any of them been damaged by it.

I mean, I used to use, the particular type of rack that I used to use to do this, I'm not going to say whose it is, that's the most acceptable for ethanol damage in the bottom of the tubes, and we didn't get it.

I dare say if you soaked it ethanol and scrubbed it with an iron brush, it will damage it. But if you're just going tap it on there, then essentially it's easy to do.

Toby Winchester

Yeah, you're going to scan and then stick it back in the -80 freezer anyway to protect the samples, aren’t you?

Neil Benn

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I mean, I did once have a go using glycerol, which lasts longer, but they ended up just dropping glycerol inside the tanks and the freezers. And so then, yeah, I got told off by facilities.

So, we were back to ethanol.

Toby Winchester

Yeah, but I suppose, you know, there is also keeping you keeping your freezer as frost free as well is quite an important step in the whole process.

Neil Benn

Yeah. I mean, the issue you're going to have more, is if you take it out -150 or -80, it will get condensation from the atmosphere anyway.

Toby Winchester

Yes

Neil Benn

But if you get that ice off the rack before you put it back in, then you won't be frost contaminating your -80 freezers.

Toby Winchester

Yes.

Neil Benn

But telling people to keep their -80 freezers in neat and tidy order, it's a person's own decision.

It's amazing, some freezers look like a child's bedroom.

Toby Winchester

Yes, yes, yeah, I remember my days at Pfizer, and yes, depending on the scientist who was in charge of the freezer, it was, yes, quite different when you open the door.

So, are there… we've talked about QR codes, we've talked about data matrix.

Is there any new fangled technology out there? I mean…

Neil Benn

Well, there's one technology that's quite interesting. If you read the patterns from the first two barcodes that I very first talked about, one of them mentions the use of RFID technology.

So, it will eventually replace barcodes. 25 years ago this was written down.

Toby Winchester

Yeah.

Neil Benn

And then people found out that if you use RFID chips, which are commonly used in the wide variety of things, hotel room keys is a good example. And when you pay for things with your phone, that's using the similar kind of technology.

But if you use RFID chips, which are minuscule, the size of a grain of rice, and you put it down to cold temperatures, it breaks.

In addition, if you irradiate it, which you want to do sometimes, just to really see for the thing you're using, the tubes, if you irradiate it, it breaks.

You can only read and use and store data on it, you can actually store data on RFID chips, which is quite interesting. You can only read and store new data on it a certain number of times.

If you do too many times, it breaks.

Toby Winchester

Okay. 

Neil Benn

So, lots of people tried to get the RFID technology up and running, but it didn't really work out too well.

When I used to work in my old company, a few years ago, we actually formed a collaboration with a university and the government, using a system called KTP, which is a UK government R&D structure, and then went with Hertfordshire University, and a scientist, who's now a friend of mine, Dr Wael Gorma, actually joined the company as an expert in wireless communication and we worked on the RFID solution, and we did actually get an RFID solution working.

Toby Winchester

Okay.

Neil Benn

Currently we’re tagging racks, but that system could be used to track tubes.

So, that was the first one that I know of, of people really getting an RFID running. There's a couple of other companies that tried, but they didn't really take off.

So, I've seen that and that's the first time I've really seen something working for RFID. The benefit of it is just not line of sight.

Toby Winchester

Yeah.

Neil Benn

Because, you need, if you've got ice on the bottom, you can't use anything that's line of sight.

You can't be using the camera or a laser or anything, it's got to use radio waves.

So, the fact that, I mean, it's all down to Wael, not me, but the fact that he's cracked that means that that could be a future technology, and the core of it, there's other advantages to it, but the core of it is it allows you to read a rack that’s got coated in ice.

Toby Winchester

Yeah. But I suppose is there enough, you know, is there enough focus to differentiate 96 tubes?

And you talk about you've done it for the rack, that's, you know, that's great. But is there enough there, you know, A1 and A2, can you differentiate between the two with a radio wave rather than a nice clean light signal?

Neil Benn

I can't really talk about it too much because I think that's being worked on.

Toby Winchester

Right. Yes, but that to me is the, that's the interesting bit, is, you know, how big a tower do you suddenly need for your radio signals rather than your…

Neil Benn

Yeah, I had a few ideas, I don't work at Ziath/Azenta anymore, but we had a few ideas and Wael is a smart guy, so…

Toby Winchester

They'll crack it.

Neil Benn

I think he’ll crack it.

And then, again, I think you'd probably be in the bit where it gets launched, the early adopters will take it and then it will grow and grow and grow.

Toby Winchester

Yes, the prices will come down, yes.

Neil Benn

Yeah, exactly. And so, I could see that in 10-15 years time, that the RFID tagged tube could be the thing that's going be taking over from 2D barcodes.

Toby Winchester

OK, is there anything else you think, you know, the future, you're out the industry, so you can probably speak of some of the crazy ideas that might be coming…

Neil Benn

With RFID chips, you can read things with phones, because as we’ve said, paying with your phone is exactly the same as another RFID chip. So, I could see the scanners start disappearing and people start using their phones.

Toby Winchester

Right, ok, so instead of you taking a, you know, relying on a phone, I mean, I'm guessing we've talked about how hard it is to scan a data matrix code, you know, with your phone, that's going to be really quite hard to get the focal length correct.

Neil Benn

Yeah, I mean, back when we used the sell scanners, it used to be quite funny, I'd always get someone, we used to sell a machine that can read an individual tube.

Toby Winchester

Yeah.

Neil Benn

And I always used to get someone who said to me, I don't need this and pulled out their £1000 iPhone and sit moving the tube and the phone back and forth for about 5 minutes until finally it read and went, “look, I don't need your thing”.

Toby Winchester

Yeah.

Neil Benn

And I'd say how much of that phone cost? About £1000. How much is my device cost? 500. And I'd pick up the tube and it can read it.

Toby Winchester

Yeah.

Neil Benn

So, the phones, the cameras in the back of phones are the same if not better as the what's in the readers, but they're not set up to read it with that focal distance.

But with RFID, you can just tap it on the back of the phone, just like how you pay.

Now I don't know what people are doing for stuff in the future, but I could see smart racks being something that will you start seeing in about 20 years.

The Internet of Things hasn't really taken off the way in which was predicted in the media. But if it does pick back up, then the technology using Internet of Things, can start being applied to the labware we've got.

Not just in rack, but in all kinds of things.

Toby Winchester

Right, yeah. So, you can track which position, you can track the conditions it's been in, that sort of thing.

Neil Benn

Yeah, yeah, there's a few things bobbing around that do this, but I can see that becoming more generic. The cost has got to come down, obviously.

Toby Winchester

Of course, always.

Neil Benn

And the usability has got to come down. I mean, one of the things that I always used to say to my colleagues when we're making scanners is: it's just a barcode scanner.

Someone didn't wake up in the morning to go into the lab to go: “You know what I’m going to do, I'm going to love scanning racks or barcodes.”

They're there to do cell biology or medicinal chemistry or molecular biology or whatever. They're not there to scan your barcodes. So your thing needs to sit in the background.

Toby Winchester

Yes.

Neil Benn

Be as efficient as possible to enable them to do what they've actually come in to do that day.

So, essentially any innovations that come about have to make the job of managing samples easier, not more difficult.

Toby Winchester

And of course, you know, Titian, who I work for, you know, sample management software is there, you know, you shouldn't really have to read the rack very often.

Unless there's, somebody’s dropped everything on the floor or it's the first time you've seen it, sort of thing. It's, so yeah, it's trying to, if every time you manoeuvre the rack, you've got to scan it, there's something slightly wrong with your process, I think. So…

Neil Benn

Yeah, yeah.

Toby Winchester

It's good to have a rack scanner because there are times you definitely need that.

Neil Benn

Exactly, yeah.

Toby Winchester

It's not every manoeuvre.

Neil Benn

Yeah. I mean if you were, even if you were to put it in every manoeuvre, then that's a belt and braces type check, which you would need a more medicinal, clinical situation for example. But then you should just be confirming your good practice is working.

Toby Winchester

Yes, and you don't want to be using a flatbed scanner that takes a minute to scan them.

Neil Benn

It has to be quick.

Toby Winchester

OK, cool. I think that was a great conversation. I hope the audience learnt. Is there anything else you want to bring up or…

Neil Benn

The only thing I think, which is interesting, which is something that, I’ve remarked over the past 30 years is something I hinted, when I very first started, my job was to put tubes in racks and go and get samples out of meat freezers and come back again. It was always in the basement. It always seems the kind of like, you know, low level type work.

As the times gone on, sample management, it's become a discipline.

Toby Winchester

Yeah.

Neil Benn

So, I think it's one of the interesting points that it's actually something that's grown in importance and significance, and people have actually realised it's a discipline. It's an important part of the drug discovery process or life science and research in general.

So, it's all very encouraging to me that I've gone from meat freezers in the car park to very large automated stores run by software such as Titian and rack scanners, I think that’s a remarkable achievement.

And if you look, there's NASDAQ listed companies now that specialise in sample management and that didn’t happen back then.

Toby Winchester

No, no, yeah. And, you know, CRO’s, that their main core business is sample management. So yes, again, that wouldn't have happened. So, yes, an interesting 30 years.

Neil Benn

Exactly, yeah.

Toby Winchester

And you know, we'll see Neil's future is in the future. And I suspect it's not the last we’ll hear, but maybe in the sample management world.

Neil Benn

Maybe in sample management, maybe something else. But for now, it's spending a bit more family time for me.

Toby Winchester

Excellent. The hardest job of them all.

Neil Benn

Exactly.

Toby Winchester

OK. And the most important. OK, anyway, yeah, Neil, thank you very much for the discussion and everybody else, thank you for listening into the latest Voices of Sample Management. Cheers.