Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world leader in serving science, is at the forefront of offering the latest innovations and technological advancements to help customers accelerate life science research, solve complex analytical challenges, increase productivity in their laboratories, improve patient health through diagnostics or the development and manufacture of life-changing therapies. Delivering an unsurpassed and evolving portfolio mix of state-of-the-art solutions, the organization brings its Mission to action each day, to enable customers to make the world healthier, cleaner and safer.
In a recent conversation with Industry Outlook, Amit Chopra, Managing Director, India and South Asia, Thermo Fisher Scientific highlighted the evolving trends in the laboratory equipment industry and the key role played by Thermo Fisher Scientific to meet the current and future needs of the customers globally.
Making Major Strides – The Lab Equipment Industry in India
Technological innovations have accelerated the development of sophisticated lab equipment for increased efficiencies across research, disease diagnosis, drug discovery, API manufacturing and vaccine development. Growth in the lab equipment market is primarily driven by an increase in the number of research activities in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, an increase in the need for effective and timely diagnosis of diseases, and rising investments and the government’s push for Make in India.
Further, the rising demand for testing with the in¬creasing prevalence of chronic and infectious diseases has led to the adoption of initiatives such as the Integrated Disease Surveillance Program. To provide the necessary infrastructural support, the government is focused on developing lab capacities in India by strengthening district public health labs and referral networks. These efforts will increase access to lab services, especially in rural areas, underscoring the need for lab equipment and medical de¬vices. Over the last two decades, the country has emerged as a dominant player in vaccine manufacturing meeting ~60% of the global demand. We are already aware of how India rolled out the world’s largest vaccination drive during the pandemic. As a result of these factors, demand for analytical instruments, specialty diagnostics equipment, life sciences solutions, and laboratory products and services is bound to grow.
Molecular testing, next-gen sequencing, and precision medicine are transformative technologies that are gaining ground for the detection and advancement of personalized treatment for cancer, reproductive health and other infectious diseases. Here again, there is a need for high-throughput, sophisticated instruments coupled with information technology for simultaneous analysis and integration of a large number of individual data.
It is important to note that the application of analytical equipment is not limited to healthcare and is widespread across different areas such as food safety, oil and gas, mining, the cement industry, and power generation, to name a few. For example, food safety is also a major concern among consumers and testing is important at every step of the value chain, including agriculture, processing, packaging, labelling, and delivery.
On the environmental front, the country has also set an ambitious target of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2070. Continuous ambient air and emission monitoring, to the transition to Lithium-ion batteries and green hydrogen, all require the deployment of sophisticated equipment for real-time analysis
Committed to Meeting Evolving Customer Needs
At Thermo Fisher, we believe that the lab equipment industry is at an inflection point against the backdrop of this growing focus on healthcare, testing, and increasing digitization. Now more than ever, there is an escalating need to provide a modern, quality-driven approach to laboratory operations that offer customers unprecedented convenience, increased efficiencies, and reliability of reporting.
Three Pillars of our Core Strategy
Developing high-impact, innovative new products - We continue to develop products that set new standards for speed, accuracy, and ease of use to help customers advance their operations.
As an example, Thermo Fisher Scientific is one of the leaders in offering next-gen sequencing platforms. The Genexus system enables end-to-end NGS workflow from biological specimen to final reporting with results delivered in a single day. Currently, its main applications are in oncology and infectious diseases research and will be soon extended to reproductive health.
Leveraging our Scale in High-growth & Emerging Markets: Intensity is a core value at Thermo Fisher Scientific. We constantly focus on strengthening and expanding our manufacturing capabilities in India and other high-growth markets, to create a differentiated experience for our customers.
Realizing early on the need for affordable COVID-19 testing in India, we demonstrated speed at scale and set up a dedicated production facility in Bangalore in just three months for the manufacturing of our CoviPath COVID-19 RT PCR detection kit. This facility’s manufacturing capacity is 30 million tests per month. Further, we partnered with key vaccine manufacturers in India to provide the necessary lab equipment, media and bioreactors to support clinical trials and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines, not just for India but for the world.
Delivering a Unique Customer Value Proposition: We help our customers accelerate innovation and enhance productivity, underpinned by quality. Our manufacturing processes and facilities around the world, are compliant with global quality standards. Our unique Practical Process Improvement (PPI) business system builds standard practices across the end-to-end value stream that help to eliminate waste and drive improvements to meet our customer’s needs the first time, and every time.
Technologies for Modernized Labs
As the world leader in serving science and with a continued focus on R&D, Thermo Fisher Scientific is uniquely positioned to deliver a comprehensive offering of end-to-end workflows and service capabilities. The organization’s unsurpassed and evolving portfolio mix spans across verticals such as healthcare, life sciences, applied markets, pharma and biotech and lab consumables and chemicals. Our modernized laboratory information management systems are specially designed to automate workflows and track important information regarding samples, reagents and consumables, and QA/QC. Our offerings allow labs to streamline operations, enhance productivity, make evidence-based clinical decisions, and drive economies of scale.
"As the world leader in serving science and with a continued focus on R&D, thermo fisher scientific is uniquely positioned to deliver a comprehensive offering of end-to-end workflows and service capabilities"
To state a few examples, Thermo Fisher’s Herasafe and Maxisafe 2030i Biological Safety Cabinets are our most technologically advanced Class II cabinets designed with breakthrough innovations to optimize contamination prevention, user protection and convenience and information management. Offering a wide temperature range from 4°C high-performance laboratory refrigerators to -196°C cryogenic freezers, the Thermo Scientific cold storage solutions are ideal for storing vaccines, blood, plasma, reagents, and other temperature-sensitive products. Systems like Vanquish Duo UHPLC have helped in increasing sample throughput while reducing cost per sample.
The Orbitrap mass spectrometry series, enables high precision and accuracy, especially needed in cases like drug development and research. The Krios cryo-electron microscope helps scientists better understand the structures of proteins and viruses at a much higher resolution than ever before. In fact, it was widely used by researchers during COVID-19 to determine the 3D structure of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and the findings accelerated the development of vaccines.
Based on our pioneering sample-retention technology, the NanoDrop series of spectrophotometers have set the standard for microvolume analysis of DNA, RNA, and protein. The Nanodrop Eight Spectrophotometer is proving to be an ideal choice for pharma/biotech and academic researchers requiring a high throughput capacity.
The Bigfoot Spectral Cell Sorter is designed for a broad range of sorting applications ranging from a 96-well plate in less than 8 seconds to a 384-well plate in less than 11 seconds. The instrument will help with the full range of sorting experiments, from sorting cells labelled with fluorescent proteins to deep immunophenotyping, genomics, cell and gene therapy research, and other high-performance, high-throughput applications. These advancements give research institutions and pharmaceutical companies unprecedented insight into the mechanism of disease that can speed the path to a better cure.
A greater understanding of biological pathways combined with technological advancements has opened opportunities in omics and molecular testing, for targeted therapy treatment and to improve patient outcomes
Staying Ahead of the Curvel
“We continue to look for early evidence of emerging trends and invest strategically in R&D to accelerate the pace of scientific development”, adds Amit. At Thermo Fisher Scientific, our continued success depends on the differential experience we create for our customers. Our focus remains on offering an innovation-backed portfolio designed for present and future needs. The India Engineering Centre at Hyderabad is a state-of-the-art R&D and engineering facility, to support new product development for lab and analytical systems. As part of our collaborative efforts for a healthier and safer India, we have set up the Food Safety Customer Solution Centre in association with Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), Delhi.
Thermo Fisher has also recently inaugurated India’s first Centre of Excellence for DNA Forensics, in technical collaboration with National Forensic Sciences University (NFSU), Gujarat. Both the Centres of Excellence are equipped with Thermo Fisher’s end-to-end workflows and are supporting scientists and experts to train and build an innovation-driven, action-oriented mindset.
Mergers and acquisitions, increasing R&D investments, new technology launches, and regional expansions to meet local needs, are helping Thermo Fisher Scientific create value for the future.
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