Speaker: Diana Bowley, Director Digital Strategy, AbbVie

Zifo’s SiEE event 2026

The Ultimate Mission: Treating Data Like an Asset to Serve Patients Faster

In a presentation on digital transformation in bioprocess labs, Diana, a digital strategy leader with AbbVie, who had earlier worked in the company’s Bioprocess CMC Development organization, emphasized that the true driver behind upgrading lab tech isn’t just modernizing software — it’s about accelerating the delivery of life-saving biologics to patients.

Before their transformation journey, CMC development labs were dealing with immense amounts of siloed information. Scientists were burdened by stacks of thermal printouts, manual transcription on clipboards, and scattered Excel spreadsheets. Diana shared her team’s multi-year journey of shifting the organization toward a “fit-for-science integrated digital ecosystem,” treating CMC data as a highly structured, contextualized asset capable of being used for immediate insights and reused seamlessly for commercial filings (like a BLA).

In this presentation, she explores the delicate balance of building custom digital architectures and managing human readiness to achieve massive efficiency gains.

Key Takeaways from the Presentation

Data “Assets” Before Digital Transformation

• Moving Beyond the Clipboard: True digital transformation isn’t just about digitizing paper; it’s about simplifying workflows and changing how scientists work. Moving away from manual transcriptions in basic Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) ensures data is captured structurally, directly from the source.
• The “Fit-for-Science” Ecosystem: Instead of forcing scientists into rigid legacy platforms, the goal is to find the right digital tools for the specific experimental science being done. Once identified, IT must deeply integrate those systems so data flows seamlessly from high-throughput instruments to data warehouses, and finally to visualization tools like Spotfire.

The “Espresso” Solution: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Platform

• Custom Solution: Because CMC process development is an exploratory science lacking the rigid, repetitive workflows of commercial manufacturing, traditional linear software often fails. To solve this, the team built a custom solution dubbed “Espresso.”
• Streamlined Data Collection: Espresso heavily reduces data silos between lab automation and instruments. Scientists now design their experiments in Espresso first, allowing them to export sample IDs to take to the instruments. While not fully automated end-to-end, this allows for a semi-automated pull of data back into Espresso, vastly reducing manual transcription errors.

Real ROI: Shrinking Timelines from Months to Days

• Slashing Documentation Time: By creating a seamless integration loop between instruments, data platforms, and visualizations, the time scientists spend simply documenting a standard two-week bioreactor experiment dropped drastically – from consuming roughly 50% of their working hours down to just 15%.
• Aggregating and Reviewing Data: Aggregating and reviewing 100% of the data points across multiple instances used to take at least a month. Thanks to the new automated data architecture, this timeline has been condensed to just days, freeing up scientist time.

The Secret Sauce: Organizational Readiness

• Waiting for the Right Moment: Sometimes the best deployment strategy is patience. Diana revealed that she delayed a major rollout by a full year because the scientific team was overwhelmed and lacked the bandwidth to absorb the change. Transformation requires true “co-ownership” between IT and lab SMEs.
• The 80/20 Rule & The Skateboard: Perfection is the enemy of progress in digital labs. Diana championed delivering an 80% solution and utilizing continuous feedback to co-evolve the technology alongside the science, with scientists playfully reminding each other, “remember we’re on the skateboard but we’re learning.”