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The Expenses Of Operation
They say time is money, and there’s a lot of truth to that aphorism. Beyond equipment and facility costs, beyond the costs involved in procuring test subjects and testing them, there is the cost of time; one of our most important resources. If you can free up time in your day-to-day operations, you can get more done effectively, allowing your budget to accomplish more. One area where there is exceptional time lost is in the categorization and management of test subjects.
Tagging Time
Primarily, tagging ends up being especially time-consuming. Imagine there are a hundred rodents that must be properly tagged for an upcoming experiment. The rodents must be anesthetized for the somewhat invasive surgery of the tag, and then they must be entered into the database manually. This involves taking a tablet or laptop, or even a notebook if your budget is in this area, and physically writing all the data.
With a hundred rodents, even a one percent instance of mistakes could mess up the experiment substantially. If one animal’s number is accidentally doubled, then it may show up in both the control and test groups, skewing data. So you’ve got the time and resources involved anesthetizing and tagging the rodents, the time taken entering them into your system, and the time taken fixing human error.
Assuming ten minutes’ time per rodent turns a hundred animals into a thousand minutes, or sixteen hours and forty minutes. If you manage to conduct one experiment like this a month, that ends up being two hundred hours. If an hour at your laboratory is only worth twenty dollars, that’s a $4,000 yearly expense in time alone. But what if you could knock down the time involved to a minute per rodent? Well, then you’re only looking at $400 a year.
A Revolutionary Solution
It may seem surprising, but there are now new rodent ear tags which portend to do just this thing. The new solution offers a humane alternative to traditional tagging means via the mini-eartag. These are a hardened two-dimensional barcode that can be scanned, which ensures complete accuracy and prevents those errors which come from the human element. Additionally, through a scanner, the data is immediately represented on your database, meaning you don’t have to enter it by hand; further reducing the propensity for error. Finally, since this humane alternative is minimally invasive, there’s no need for anesthesia. That means you don’t have to buy the chemical compounds involved in making the test subjects unconscious, they don’t have to be made unconscious, and there’s no waiting necessary while the anesthesia kicks in; all substantial time-saving elements.
A Source Of Savings
By finding methods like these and applying them in your lab, you’ll be able to free up employee time and ensure it is devoted to continuing development. If you can save $3600 a year in time alone, think how much you’ll save in anesthetic and collateral damages. A minimally-invasive surgery is much less likely to fundamentally damage a subject than a simple two-dimensional barcode.
Additionally, this new method is quickly becoming adopted by the leading pharmaceutical groups across the globe. From Amgen to FivePrime, Alexion, Johnson & Johnson, and USSouthwestern, there are a variety of groups who have seen the budgetary consolidation potential of this new innovation, and have so applied it.
Refraining from pursuing such techniques ends up reducing competitive advantage, giving these groups an added motivation in making the upgrade. The nature of scientific advances naturally benefits from following the latest trends in technology, and such increased budgets make acquisition of even newer innovations much less costly.
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Author’s Bio
Wendy Dessler
Title: Super-Connector at OutreachMama
Wendy is a super-connector with OutreachMama and Youth Noise NJ who helps businesses find their audience online through outreach, partnerships, and networking. She frequently writes about the latest advancements in digital marketing and focuses her efforts on developing customized blogger outreach plans depending on the industry and competition. You can contact her on Twitter.
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