Client stories
Eliminating human errors - Case Sciar
Eliminating human errors - Case Sciar
How could we fight the world's most challenging problems such as cancer, diabetes, food shortage, and climate change? Would it be possible by eliminating human errors in laboratory processes by using the level of reproducibility used in the aviation industry?
Joel, Felix, and Kristian, the founders of Finnish tech startup Sciar, met while studying biosciences at the University of Helsinki. They were surprised how inconsistently some of the labs worked and how poorly digital tools were utilized. In research, reproducibility is everything, and with the current methods, reaching it can be challenging.
"People are good at many things, but reaching standardized results is not one of them. It's almost impossible for a person to repeat all the variables, in the same way, every time, and in science, even a small change can affect the results a lot and cost a substantial amount of money. -Joel Noutere, CEO Sciar
Especially Kristian, who has a background in aviation as a commercial pilot, was shocked to see how unsystematic the work in the laboratories sometimes was.
"The current way of doing things allows mistakes to happen. It's something I'm not used to, as in aviation, millions of dollars are spent each year to minimize the possibility of human error." -Kristian Alaviuhkola, COO Sciar
Sciar is now on a quest to tackle the problems of unstandardized bio-scientific research by eliminating human errors with the help of AR- and MR- technologies. They aim to streamline the workflow in laboratories, which can prevent extremely costly mistakes and make the results easier to compare.
Joel, Felix, and Kristian knew right from the beginning that they would need help with building a business around their idea. They didn't want to be one of the tech startups with an excellent idea but who would fail to succeed due to a lack of business experience and understanding of product development.
"We knew that almost 90% of startups end up failing, but were determined to beat the stats. We also understood that we couldn't do it alone and that we needed to find people who could help us." -Joel Noutere
The guys asked us to help them with the product development process. We facilitated a workshop where we looked into the product in more detail and commented, and gave recommendations about the plans Sciar currently had. We also created a list of actions for Sciar to follow.
"With Marko's help and guidance, we were able to avoid many of the common pitfalls we otherwise would have fallen into. He also made us realize that our plans were quite big and that we should divide them into smaller goals." -Joel Noutere
Sciar now has a team of nine people with highly interdisciplinary backgrounds, including a team of developers who work with the product software.
"During this summer, we are launching a few bigger pilots with bigger organizations and hoping to turn them into real clients by the end of this year." -Kristian Alaviuhkola
Sciar is closer to making their vision into reality than ever and is working hard to build both the product and the company.
Read more about Sciar on their website.