Kiran Chetry: If you've taken the pulse of medicine lately,
you've probably noticed healthcare has gotten
a digital makeover.
From wearables that track our wellness
to the rise of telehealth.
We're more connected to vitals and virtual care than ever.
And for providers, automation unlocks efficiencies
from billings and records to the manufacture
of life-saving therapies.
In the United States of Automation, the prognosis is good.
If the last few years have taught us anything
it's that innovation in healthcare
has far-reaching implications,
especially when time is of the essence.
At the startup Cellares,
engineers are helping cell therapy manufacturers
by becoming manufacturers themselves
of highly efficient modular factories
that can multiply the ability to save lives.
Fabian Gerlinghaus: In 2019, we started Cellares.
We're on a mission
to accelerate access to life saving cell therapies.
And really what's been blocking access to date is the fact
that cell therapies are very, very expensive to manufacture
and very difficult to make these personalized therapeutics
at large scale for hundreds of thousands
and ultimately millions of patients.
Cell therapies today are manufactured one patient at a time
in centralized manufacturing facilities
using very manual methods, and what comes out
at the end of that process is one drug for one patient.
What we've created at Cellares is really a step change
in technological capabilities.
So, we fully automated cell therapy manufacturing from start
to finish, but so it's got the ability to produce 16 batches
for 16 different patients simultaneously.
Daniele Malleo: What we want to reduce
is the amount of process failure
that currently occurs during manufacturing
of these cell therapies.
And the most likely causes of process failure
are human error and product contamination.
This robot can operate day and night, 365 days a year
plus the fact that there is a relatively compact footprint
and this can be deployed.
All of that translates to lower cost of therapeutic drugs
and therefore wider access to the patient population.
Kiran: All this innovation brings the promise
of improved outcomes.
It also asks more of the connectivity
and processing power providers need to keep pace.
For perspective on that, we turn to Joe Drygas
who monitors healthcare IT trends for AT&T.
Joe Drygas: One of the most important aspects of automation
is reliable, high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity,
and AT&T is making a significant investment in building
out our fiber footprint in the United States.
It's really vital for automation
that patient data is kept secure.
AT&T is working with companies to provide security embedded
in our technology like connectivity.
For example, in a healthcare provider environment,
we can pair secure connectivity with edge computing
so that the data never even leaves the hospital,
keeping it much more secure
than if it was to go out on the public internet.
Fabian: Software and connectivity is a huge part
of what we're doing here.
At the moment, pharmaceutical companies are generating
between 400 and 600 pages of paper-based batch records
every time they make one dose for one patient.
Now imagine making 100,000 doses
and you're writing 100,000 books of documentation
Our software actually transitions the industry
from paper-based batch records to electronic batch records
and then also auto populates about 80% of the content.
So, the software knows what did we do
to the product at what time.
Joe: A lot of healthcare providers talk about the need
to remove the day-to-day mundane tasks
from the field because a lot of nurses and clinicians
say one of the major reasons they're planning on leaving
is because of the absence of automation.
So, we really believe that automation's gonna
help propel these organizations to be able to move forward
in spite of all of the change
and all the turnover in healthcare.
Kiran: Taking a look at the cell shuttle,
explain what is going on in here from the time
that that specific cartridge gets inserted into the shuttle.
Fabian: Yes, there is a robotic arm in there
that transports single-use cartridges
which contain patient product to be processed.
The instruments that are contained
in this health shuttle can perform
about 90% of the cell therapy workflows known today.
We also have instruments
to perform quality control analysis.
Kiran: Oh, so you can check on the status as it's happening.
If something isn't going right,
you don't have to continue the hours-long process
that isn't gonna end up working.
Fabian: That's absolutely right.
Kiran: OK, so this is where you program in
the exact treatment for the patient.
Fabian: That's right.
So, here you can see there is a feed-through space
where the consumable cartridge is loaded
and that consumable cartridge will hold the blood
that comes from that patient.
The same consumable cartridge is where that blood
is gonna be processed inside the cell shuttle
and after the cartridge is gonna be returned
to the operator here and it's gonna contain
the therapeutic doses that then are shipped to the hospital
or cancer center for infusion into the patients.
Joe: One of the things that healthcare enterprises need
to keep in mind with processing all this data
is that you need reliable high-speed connectivity
in order to underpin automation.
AT&T helps connect healthcare organizations to the cloud
in high-bandwidth, low-latency ways.
Fabian: We were creating an ecosystem of technologies here
and the software certainly interfaces with many players
in this ecosystem.
So, we're generating vast data sets and by being able
to connect, what did we do in the manufacturing process to
what impact did that actually have on the patient,
that's going to enable our biopharmaceutical companies
to make better cell therapies by understanding better
what really matters in the manufacturing process.
We're looking at the industry today.
There's patients dying needlessly
even though there's FDA-approved drugs on the market
because the industry can't manufacture cell therapies
at large scale.
Ultimately, this is a complete revolution
in cell therapy manufacturing technologies that will be
the defacto standard for cell-therapy manufacturing
moving forward and the impact of the work that we're doing
at Cellares will be that hundreds of thousands of patients
and then over the years, millions of patients will live
that would've otherwise died
because of the manufacturing modeling.
Kiran: At the cellular level
and in the connective tissue that moves medicine forward,
automation offers surgical precision
at speeds any manufacturer would value.
It would be a medical marvel if engineers hadn't designed
these new tools to perform as if lives depended on them.