The COVID-19 crisis necessitates a new and evolving approach to doing business. Employers and employees alike must adapt to remote work, when in some cases this might not have been feasible before. How does remote work fit into industry? Furthermore, where do we go from here?
Remote Work: People and Platforms
Quite suddenly, businesses that never conceived of it are finding themselves adapting to work-from-home (WFH) employment. This rapid upheaval of workforce structure has unveiled the various levels of readiness for contingencies and emergency scenarios for every company. In disaster-prone areas such as the West Coast, many industries at least had some guidelines for how to deal with emergencies.
However, the scope and scale of the pandemic has pushed at the boundaries of what companies were prepared to implement in a short period of time. The safety of employees and their customers is the number one priority, always. To offset any risks, offering WFH is the best option when it can be done. And as mentioned above in calibration, when that is not an option, other measures must be taken.
Another example is in the desperately needed area of vaccine research. How can laboratory workers work from home, when lab equipment and research animals are unable to be brought home? Some institutions are operating on a rotation basis, so that social distancing can be maintained by having different groups work in the lab at different times. Even more challenging are situations in which people not only need to protect themselves from each other, but also protect research animals such as non-human primates from potentially contracting the virus as well. Decreasing the amount of labor required for research projects might have to be the best option for some laboratories.
As many of us are doing right now, laboratory researchers are also relying upon remote videoconferencing from Zoom and other platforms, when at all possible. Since this is not feasible for certain aspects of research, again social distancing and spacing across facilities becomes paramount.
No matter the field, whether in research or manufacturing, each team and department must respond to projects differently, but consistently.
Meanwhile, the new status of remote work is something Qualer has positioned itself to champion. Reliance upon remote sensing of laboratory assets is more crucial than ever before. With Qualer’s asset management platforms, the strength of cloud-based architecture and real-time asset tracking can help facilities adapt to this challenge. Qualer can provide customer assistance to help implement this asset management. Additionally, Qualer’s strength in validation and compliance software platforms is available to maintain business integrity in a time of great strain.
How Qualer Forges Ahead
Qualer spends every day working toward solutions to help streamline metrology, asset management, calibration, and equipment compliance. Qualer’s cloud-based platforms yield powerful remote tracking and collaborative capabilities. Because of this unique and powerful combination, Qualer is ready to meet the needs of industries that need remote solutions or real-time asset tracking.
Event Horizon: No Escaping the Future
In this present and future of COVID-19 that none of us wanted, we must make choices every day that affect our lives and the lives of those around us. We have never before been simultaneously in need of technological connectivity, while also being limited by real-life interaction.
With videoconferencing, remote learning, and the reliance upon virtual aspects of work life, we are adapting. But what comes next? How can we solve the problems we haven’t foreseen yet?
As mentioned earlier, AI is becoming heavily relied upon in the COVID-19 crisis. In addition to aiding with supply distribution networks, AI is also being used to help find weaknesses in the virus itself, in its genetic code, and in finding potential therapies and eventual vaccines. This once future but now present technology will only expand our knowledge, and give us more ways to make our lives run more smoothly.
Using Bluetooth for contact tracing, sharing test results in real time, and further streamlining biotech to face the COVID-19 crisis is happening now. With the IoT and cloud-based platforms, using devices to track assets remotely is something Qualer will continue to champion.
Future possibilities abound to meet new challenges. Using augmented reality to picture pathways to defeat novel pathogens will become the norm. Instantaneous symptom tracking will aid in helping contain infections before they reach critical points to spread disease.
To meet the challenge of contactless delivery, drones and other robotic delivery systems will become mainstream. Smart devices will enable a vast network of information that can help keep us connected in new ways, and help keep us safe as well.
We must keep thinking forward, not simply meet the challenges of our time. We must think beyond that which has happened, and beyond what might happen. Thinking about the impossible helps to make it possible. This is true for solving problems. And we can all do this together, whether near or far.
What is the future you want to make, to improve our lives?
