Panel Addresses Virtualization in the Post-Pandemic Era

The Virtual Utilization presentation and panel discussion on June 23rd had a great turnout, hitting our capacity limit of 50 attendees! It was invigorating to see people in person again and enjoy the spacious Pavilion Room at Gillette while hearing the New England Revolution soccer game in the background. This event began with a networking hour followed by welcome remarks and introductions from John Spohn and Shannon DeMello.

To kick off the presentation portion of the event, Sunny Tam offered a summary of the applications of virtualization tools in the biopharm industry and then introduced the event’s first presenter, Yakov Cherner of ATeL, who covered augmented reality tools for biomanufacturing education and training with interactive videos. Personnel can now be trained on standard operating procedures with tablets or cell phones through augmented videos and exercises. In the biomanufacturing plant, augmented reality can integrate with existing training, resulting in fewer human errors and high operational accuracy and efficiency.

The second topic was virtual utilization during factory acceptance testing. Rusty Morrison from CAI gave an overview of the pros and cons of virtual FATs and described real life applications of virtual tools used during the pandemic. Valuable lessons learned were shared, with the key takeaway that, with robust planning, more refinement of the process and availability of tools (cameras, lights, computers, headphones etc.), remote FATs may be adopted more widely in the future.

The third topic was virtual utilization for remote auditing. This topic was presented by Paul Partovi from Sanofi. He described the use of virtual hardware and software to perform site auditing. Similar to Rusty, Paul indicated that there are both pros and cons with this approach and more refinement of personnel training and hardware improvements are needed. The presentation portion of the event concluded with a demo of smart glasses, a technology used for remote auditing and trouble shooting in a biomanufacturing environment.

Next was a panel discussion with the presenters fielding questions from the audience. With the raise of hands, the audience voiced their appreciation for the content delivered and the new knowledge gained. Following a round of applause for our presenters, moderator, meeting manager and ISPE team, attendees joined the applause in the stadium as the New England Revolution proved victorious. It was a pleasure to network face-to-face, enjoy the beautiful New England weather to kick-off the summer and celebrate the hoped-for end of the pandemic.

A big thank you to our generous sponsors DPS Group, Genesis, ICQ Consultants and Masy BioServices for helping to make this event possible. Hope to see you again at our next in-person educational program!