Lab Workflow Automation for Labs That Have to Use Paper

Pharma is engineering drug delivery with nanoparticles. Biotech is growing mini “organoids” to test new kinds of treatments. Precision medicine is mapping multi-omics for hyper-personalized care. All of it’s new, exciting, and transformative… except for the part where it all still starts with someone filling out a paper form. The reality is that, for most labs, getting rid of paper-based workflows isn’t an option. But they can replace their manual data entry and analysis with lab workflow automation that fixes the problems all that paper causes.

And if they don’t innovate on those kinds of lab processes as much as they innovate on their core products and services, they’re losing out on ROI comparable to developing new drugs and lab-developed tests.

That’s not speculation either. Labs adopting automation solutions report results like reducing human error by 88% and drops in process costs up to 50%.

And Onymos DocKnow, our AI document processing platform, is one of those lab automation solutions. Here are just some of the ways you can use it to transform the parts of your lab that slow it down the most.

Accessioning and test requisition forms (TRFs) 

Test requisition forms (TRFs) are a critical part of most precision medicine workflows, and the vast majority of TRFs are still on paper. There are too many legacy systems, legal requirements, and handwritten supporting documents to drive an industry-wide paper-to-digital shift — yet. That means, for the foreseeable future, paper-based TRFs will stay the norm, and laboratory workflows will have to deal with them. 

Sometimes, TRFs arrive incomplete, and accessioners have to comb through dozens of pages of supporting documents to find the data points they need. Sometimes, the data itself is incorrect, and they have to perform painstaking reconciliation.

Now, they can use DocKnow. 

DocKnow not only extracts and normalizes data from TRFs, but it also uses context-aware matching to connect data points (recognizing, for example, that “Dr. John R. Smith” and “John Smith, MD” are the same person) and flag discrepancies across primary and supporting documents.

For example, it might identify a mismatch between a test ordered and the specimen type collected. This is highlighted for the reviewer to validate. The process can even be fully automated based on hierarchical confidence scores.

Compliance and SOPs (standard operating procedures)

Maintaining (or improving) data integrity is one of the biggest challenges that the life sciences as a whole face. Some of the citations the FDA issued the most in the last year involved inadequate procedural/quality controls and incomplete or missing records. 

That’s probably one of the reasons we hear about SOPs so often in our conversations with pharma and biotech orgs. SOPs define how employees should handle critical workflows, from sample processing to data entry to qualifying and rejecting claims. 

But even with strong SOPs in place, managers have to ensure they’re actually followed. Naturally, the more manual the workflows and the more complex the processes, the more likely it is that mistakes happen. 

That’s why DocKnow can be configured to automatically capture, verify, and classify data based on your lab’s SOPs (or custom business rules).

DocKnow also includes Nucleus, a private LLM. It unifies information across your SOPs, reports, and connected data sources into a single, consolidated knowledge base. Lab staff can ask questions and get source-linked answers, instantly.

Unstructured data

Most lab data is unstructured (e.g., doctor’s notes, Excel files, legacy printouts). It’s hard to search, prone to getting lost, and it usually blocks automation.

In our meta-analysis of industry surveys of lab leaders, they consistently describe change resistance, lack of seamless integrations, and limited resources as some of their biggest challenges. But the single most-cited challenge? Data silos and unstructured data.

That’s why DocKnow’s AI is purpose-built to uncover insights from your unstructured data sources with a CIM (Cognitive Insight Model). CIMs specialize in domain-specific reasoning tasks.

For instance, in a biotech lab, DocKnow’s CIM, Synapse, can parse CRO (Contract Research Organization) reports to auto-generate compliant LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) entries.

Clinical trial eligibility

Every clinical trial has strict inclusion and exclusion criteria (e.g., age, medical history, biomarkers, comorbidities, medications) for carefully screening candidates.

Managing all of this criteria by itself can be confusing enough, but there are often exceptions, conditions, and overrides that make things even more complex.

But DocKnow can cut through all of that by automatically screening candidates or providing reference-backed recommendations through its “Insights” panel. These insights are highly configurable and can include summaries, charts, or anything else you need to keep your team more informed.

What makes DocKnow different 

Most IDP platforms, automated systems, and software solutions in general, offer the same trade-off: faster time to production for less control. That’s less control over your data and less control over the solution itself. 

But DocKnow is built using No-Data Architecture. That means Onymos sees no data and saves no data, and the entire solution is hosted in your environment. You can even license the actual, functional source code (that means you are never stuck inside a template we built for you).

Our model eliminates the risk of third-party data breaches and vendor lock-in. Plus, it helps you centralize your data in-house for easier compliance, more confidence in data integrity, and stronger security overall.

In other words, when you use DocKnow, you deploy it where you want it, exactly how you want it. 

If you think laboratory automation needs to be a priority at your org, well, we agree. The benefits of lab automation, even for labs that can’t get out of their paper-heavy workflows, are real, with measurable reductions in error rates, turnaround times, and wasted hours. Get in touch with our team for a customized demo.