Around half of all scientific聽research is wasted due to a lack of the right recording tools, says Labstep founder Jake Schofield.
The platform lets scientists record, track and share their research in an easy-to-use way, which could end up saving taxpayers millions.
The platform came about following Schofield and his co-founder鈥檚 personal frustrations around the process when they were carrying out research.
Over half of all research results published can鈥檛 be reproduced or validated, he told 老九品茶Cloud, and despite the experiments taking place in multi-million-pound research environments, the vast majority are still recorded on pen and paper.
鈥淎 colossal amount of money is spent on research each year 鈥� billions,鈥� he said. 鈥淚n some cases over half of the output is wasted because it can鈥檛 be reproduced.
“A huge amount of time, effort and money is wasted because the results can鈥檛 be validated so they鈥檙e effectively worthless.
鈥淚t will have a drastic effect on the scientific community if we can improve the statistics around this. There will be knock-on effects for the world at large.
鈥淚f we can make even a small percentage change it will have a big effect on the聽drugs and discoveries coming to market and a positive effect for the public.鈥�
Scientists spend a lot of time trying things that don鈥檛 work, sometimes repeating experiments around 100 times, says Schofield. What is often lost are the failures,聽which can be聽key to others not making the same mistakes.
鈥淪cience is driven by tech in certain aspects but has a massive blind spot 鈥� a tool that would really benefit the process of science itself,鈥� he said. 鈥淟abstep opens doors for collaboration and more open science, increasing the rate people can share information and drive scientific process.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a crazy environment that leads to huge amounts of frustration with scientists that means they almost fall out of love with the research process.
鈥淚f we can improve that we will have a lot more people attracted to research.鈥�
The company is currently rolled out to 600 institutions, mostly in the US, with the goal of becoming the default platform for scientific experimentation.
The tool is designed to create a 鈥榬ecipe鈥� experience rather than just emulating a paper notebook or inventory management system, which is what most digital research tools until now have done.
鈥淲hen you鈥檙e at the lab bench following experimental protocol it鈥檚 very much like a recipe,鈥� said Schofield.
鈥淚t鈥檚 step-by-step, 鈥榓dd one ingredient, then the next, then incubate for 20 minutes and you get this result鈥�.
鈥淲e help build those things run at the lab bench using built-in timers, they take pictures and you can comment on every step.
鈥淭his makes collaboration easier because when you鈥檙e carrying out work at the bench you can create a newsfeed timeline saying 鈥楯ake ran this at this time and got these results鈥�.鈥�