SOLUTIONS

Iota: Small, Simple, Significant

IOTA

The smallest component can often make the most significant impact.

That’s certainly the case with Iota, a revolutionary new software platform designed to give research teams the flexibility, agility, and robustness they need in today’s technology-driven research environments. Best of all, the Iota innovation platform is simple and nimble. It is scientist and engineer friendly, making it easy to learn, adopt and integrate.

How Iota Works

Iota uses a Microsoft Office 365 (MS365) framework, including Teams and OneNote. Because MS365 is widely used across many STEM industries, it’s a well-known tool—which means it enables an extension of an already familiar workflow and interface.

Iota is hosted in a cloud environment and accessible via the web-based Teams client.

Iota is integrated with wearable technology, capturing data from various sources.

Users are able to organize, improve, annotate, visualize and analyze data so it can be stored and retained in a usable format.

Customizable components or modules can be added to Iota to further its use as an immersive collaboration tool.

WHY CHOOSE IOTA

Iota has many capabilities that will allow it to revolutionize how research teams work:

Data integration and integrity

With Iota, all information is housed in the platform, even that with third-party collaborations. Iota’s quality controls and audit trail ensures built-in data integrity and security.

Real-time data transformation

All the captured data are automatically processed in Iota using custom cloud-based analysis engines, including searchable video, machine learning algorithms, data visualizations, etc.

Collaboration

Iota enables easy information-sharing, connecting researchers and labs to each other for real-time collaboration. As an open collaborative platform, Iota enhances speed and accuracy as multimedia data are captured and organized.

Data curation

Iota provides an end-to-end process for managing data throughout its lifecycle—from creation and initial storage, to cataloguing and analysis, to archival for future research and analysis reuse.

Organization knowledge

As Iota gathers data from various contributors, it “fuses” data together in unique ways—ultimately, building organizational knowledge on a project.

Customization

The beauty of Iota is that it can be tailored for any company in any industry by building customized modules and components that specifically address their needs and how they want to use Iota.

Ontology-based search

Ontology-based search engines provide more accurate and relevant search results by defining the relationships between words and content. This allows you to quickly target only the content you want to view, by selecting a proper class. Varya enables you to generate an ontology model based on your business-specific content, regardless of industry type—allowing you to connect to organizational knowledge with the confidence it will provide the results you need. Read case study

Additional Features

Diverse and varied options for data processing (text, photo, video, audio/dictation) using handheld devices, including iOS and Android phones

QR codes to link and open experiments on any device, in any location

Many options for data processing, collation and visual interpretation

Historical records accessible within one multi-user experiential record

Interactive dashboard for use in group meetings, presentations or summary reports

Ability to set up work units instantly to segment the data and control access

Ability to log in with preferred credentials, so it eliminates the need for another login/password

Compatible with a variety of devices

With an agnostic and open approach, Iota is designed to connect with multiple devices.

  • RealWare
  • Vuzix
  • iPad
  • iPhone
  • GoPro
  • Keyboard
  • Scanner
  • Microphone
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Multiple Ways to Leverage Iota

Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN)

Users and external partners can share their notebook content (i.e. research, experiment and results) in a collaborative interface that properly records data ownership, version history and audit trail.

Wearable and mixed-reality devices

Data can be integrated from an array of devices, analyzed, curated and shared in an enterprise environment.

Third party collaboration

Users may collaborate with their colleagues around the world through “hands on” laboratory information exchange, driving consistent experiment set-up and performance between sites.

Virtual lab

Users can participate in virtual meetings from a laboratory setting through the wearable device. Participation may include recording, streaming video or recording notes globally while in laboratory or meeting room settings.

Guided operations

Users can train on laboratory instruments and equipment while “hands on” in the laboratory. This approach assists instrument/procedure users at various levels, enabling experiments to be consistently performed and documented in real time.

CASE STUDY

Iota’s Integration with Wearable Devices

Pain Point

The large number of computer-based systems, scientists and engineers involved in a research project provides complications, particularly in highly detailed and regulated STEM industries. As a result, many STEM companies are slow to adopt new technologies. One pharmaceutical company was unable to fully leverage the power behind wearable devices because they didn’t have the right platform to support the data collected from wearables.

Solutions

Varya Virtual’s Iota platform, coupled with RealWear wearable technology, enabled research, experiments and results to be captured easily. Iota allowed the pharmaceutical company to build “notebooks” of research, experiments and results. These notebooks included audio, video and images captured by the head-worn mobile devices. Through this interface, the pharmaceutical company was able to capture, locate, organize and perform analytics on this information to share and transfer to other parts of their organization.

Benefits

The pharmaceutical company leveraged Iota to neatly organize and “package” this information for technical transfer internally. This same capability could be similarly leveraged with CROs and CMOs, allowing organizations to have an immersive, real-time collaborative experience.

Conclusion

Iota allowed the pharmaceutical company to interface with multiple partner organizations, maintain needed confidentiality and firewalls. They develop apps, workflows and dashboards that enhanced the information workflow.

Big idea

Cloud-based storage now allows, with security controls in place, authenticated users from anywhere in a partner network to access and contribute to this content.

CASE STUDY

Varya Virtual’s ontology search engine

Pain Point

Researchers, scientists, and engineers often evaluate data points from multiple internal and external sources, with the input coming for various independent platforms, databases, or owners across an organization. Collating and compiling the data is laborious, inefficient, and time-consuming—sometimes requiring days to complete as data is exported from different sources and then collected and organized in one document. This heavily manual task delays the critical work of analyzing data to make decisions about the next phase of research.

Solutions

Varya Virtual’s ontology search engine—built into our Iota software platform—is just the solution for today’s technology-driven research environments. By connecting the Iota software to internal systems and databases, the ontology search function is able to extract all the data you’re seeking in a matter of seconds. Additionally, the more data is inputted into Iota-connected systems, the more results you have at your fingertips—literally. The ontology search’s filter pane allows you to pinpoint exactly the information you need for analysis. This innovative search engine alleviates the time-consuming (and often frustrating) manual process of compiling data from multiple sources.

Benefits

Time-savings is the most significant—and immediate—benefit for research teams. The ontology search engine saves time as it eliminates the manual process of identifying and consolidating data. It allows you to analyze data faster in order to make project decisions. This, in turn, improves efficiency and saves money.

Another benefit of the ontology model is its flexibility. It can be set up to be used by multiple groups, and it can be programmed to “connect the dots” and correlate any differences in data labeling among research groups. Again, this saves time so data can be analyzed faster for the decision-making process.

Additionally, the ontology model enables integration with visualization tools like Microsoft Power BI and Jupyter Notebook to further enhance data analysis and decision making.

Conclusion

The ontology search function allows you to collect and analyze data from a multitude of systems in a more automated way. It eliminates manual labor and redundancies while providing savings of both time and cost.

Big idea

Ontology searches are beneficial for any industry that leverages data on a regular basis: pharmaceutical, research, STEM, engineering, manufacturing and education, among others.

AS SEEN IN

American Pharmaceutical Review

  [A large pharmaceutical company] found that the use of head mounted wearable devices from RealWear combined with the use of Varya’s Iota platform greatly eased the transfer of technical information within the organization. Specifically, this meant significantly reduced technical transfers between Product Development organizations and Manufacturing. Similarly, the team identified significant opportunities to streamline our work with CROs, given the ease of which collaboration partners could share notes, results and methods. The combination of these improvements allowed our scientists to create multi-user, collaborative ‘notebooks’ where information could be expanded to include video, image and audio content and information could be exchanged internally and externally easily and securely.
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See Iota in Action

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