Labtools.AI 2024 in Review

As we wrap up our first exciting year at Labtools.AI, we're taking a moment to look back at the milestones and innovations that have shaped our journey since inception.

From breakthrough product launches to strategic partnerships and global expansion, 2024 has been a year of significant achievements and we couldn’t have done it without you!

Springing into Action

April In April, we first had the idea for Labtools.Ai while working closely with our scientific partners across the US. We realized with every new partnership at Vitality, we had to re-invent the wheel for starting machine learning projects. Formalize partnership, Locate Data, Build Integrations, Wrangle Data, and then we could have fun implementing machine learning. After partnering with Merck, we realized we could simplify this onboarding process by launching a SaaS app and the idea for Labtools.AI was born!

May In May, we starting piloting demos with our scientific partners and the response from the scientific community was overwhelmingly positive, validating our hypothesis that lots of laboratories want to implement machine learning, but the data engineering prerequisites are often overlooked when trying to implement the shiny new AI tools.

June The month of partnerships. We joined forces with several leading pharmaceutical companies, and reached out to 45 different ELNs/LIMs providers to discuss integrating LabTools with their existing systems. These collaborations were aimed at customizing our platform since most laboratories use different mixes of software providers and some of our largest enterprise clients use over 1500 different scientific software systems!

Some LIMs providers were nice, offering to partner and immediately saw benefits. Others were the grumpy kids in the sandbox, not willing to share API access unless there were large revenue shares or some type of pay-to-play kickback. After the business agreements were in place, we could finally start building the unified API we planned for Labtools.AI!

Q3: Summer of Customer Discovery & Prototyping

July We kicked off the third quarter by calling, meeting, and zooming with veterinary diagnostic laboratories (VDLs) who work closely with our animal health partners. We discovered most of them still rely on pen/paper, while some of the more advanced VDLs like Iowa State University - iastate.edu - have publicly available API access.

We ran a few paid pilots to test the idea of building veterinary integrations in addition to LIMs and confirmed the unmet need to help laboratories query data from their diagnostics partners directly instead of waiting on emails containing scanned PDFs.

August August was the month of failures - we lost two big enterprise contracts for Labtools after 6 months of slow enterprise sales cycles… Some lessons we had to learn the hard way, so we started architecting self-service signup to roll out down the line. The good news was we became official Amazon Web Services (AWS) partners and our team completed professional technical certifications to showcase our engineers’ top notch cloud expertise!

September By September, we finished the self-service-signup and started deploying our API that allowed for real-time integration with major LIMs systems without the need for expensive API access. This development was particularly significant for small to mid-sized labs without software engineers who often rely on third party companies to build software integrations into a single system.

We also partnered with the Iowa State Single Cell Phenomics Center to conduct preliminary trials on using generative AI to predict image-based flow cytometry expression. Our preliminary data in sperm cells was encouraging, we we submitted a SBIR grant to continue funding our research into digital protein expression.

Q4: Finding a Spark of Hope

October October was all about community. We hosted Labtools.AI webinars, presented the Triangle Perspective on AI, ML, & the Future of Drug Development bringing together industry experts, clients, and the research community to discuss how companies here in the RTP are utilizing machine learning. We ended October on a high note attending Future Labs Live 2024 in Philly, where our team flew in to highlight the computer vision tools on Labtools.AI and relax at Topgolf afterwards.

November In November, we focused on giving back. Labtools.AI initiated a partnership with educational institutions NC State for entrepreneurship & the local RTP non-profit FAIH.org presenting about AI applications in the lab at Duke University.

December We closed the year by sitting down with Rosalie to give a sneak peek at our public beta product release in January 2025 at the Society for Laboratory Automation & Screening (SLAS). Without revealing too much, we plan on launching 3 key application components early next year and our team enjoyed the week off between Christmas through New Years to spend well deserved time with family.

Looking Forward

Reflecting on the year, we are proud of our team's hard work and the positive impact our products continue to make in the scientific community. As we look forward to 2025, Labtools.AI remains committed to helping expedite biomedical breakthroughs by helping scientists utilize machine learning to automate their workflows in the lab. Thank you to our clients, partners, and team members for an incredible year. Here's to achieving even greater heights together in the coming year! 🥳