New partnership pairs HighRes lab automation and Cellario® orchestration with Involve Data’s data and AI strategy, closing the gap between the physical lab and the enterprise systems that depend on it.
BEVERLY, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–HighRes®, the market leader in lab automation, and Involve Data, a data strategy firm for life sciences, today announced a partnership to help large pharmaceutical and biotech organizations connect their labs to their enterprise, closing the gap between physical instruments and the data, analytics, and AI that depend on them.
Over the past decade, life science organizations have made two large but separate investments: one in the enterprise digital stack of cloud platforms, electronic lab notebooks, LIMS, and increasingly AI and machine learning; and one in the lab itself, in instruments, liquid handlers, robotics, and automated work cells. On paper, the two should form a single connected enterprise in which data flows from instrument to insight and AI closes the loop back to the bench. In practice, they rarely do. Leaders report fragmented data they cannot unify across sites or after an acquisition, turnaround times they cannot defend, hidden operating costs, and scientific decisions that stall because the underlying data cannot be trusted.
HighRes and Involve Data argue that this is not primarily a tooling, vendor, or culture problem. It is an architecture problem, and it is becoming urgent: as AI compresses the Design and Analyze halves of the R&D loop, the bottleneck shifts to the physical lab, making a connected lab the rate-limiting step for an organization’s AI ambitions.
“Our customers have automated the bench and modernized their data stack, but the two were never designed to run as one system,” said Josh Robertson, VP Support, HighRes. “As AI accelerates discovery, the physical lab becomes the constraint. This partnership lets us help customers connect both ends into a single, faster loop.”
The partnership pairs two capabilities that rarely sit under one roof. HighRes brings the physical lab and the orchestration layer that runs it: modular automation systems, integrated instruments, and Cellario® OS, which turns scientific intent into executed work and captures the resulting data with full context and provenance. Involve Data brings the scientific enterprise side: data architecture, an enforceable data semantic hierarchy, and AI and machine learning enablement that make lab data cross-comparable and decision-ready across the organization. Together, the two firms can advise across the full stack, from robot arms to enterprise data and AI, in a single conversation, a span that neither a pure vendor nor a pure consultancy can cover alone. In joint engagements, they assess a customer’s lab across four connected layers, instruments, orchestration, data fabric, and analytics, to locate the seams that limit AI readiness and turnaround and to prioritize the highest-leverage next moves.
“The organizations gaining real value from AI are the ones that put their data architecture in order first,” said Bill Goode, Managing Partner, Involve Data. “By combining our data and AI strategy with HighRes’s orchestration and instruments, we can give a customer one coherent plan across the full stack instead of two partial answers.”
The thinking behind the partnership is set out in a new, jointly published whitepaper, “The Connected Lab,” the first in a series. It introduces the Digital Lab Maturity Model, a four-layer framework and four-stage benchmark that leadership teams can use to score where their lab is today and chart where to go next. “The Connected Lab” is available to download now at https://www.highres.com/highres-blog/the-connected-lab.
Organizations interested in benchmarking their own maturity can request a joint working session through either company.
ABOUT HIGHRES
HighRes is a global laboratory automation company that designs and builds modular automation systems, dynamic scheduling and orchestration software, and integrated lab automation instruments for pharmaceutical, biotech, and academic research customers. Its Cellario® OS orchestration platform unifies instruments, workflows, and data across the lab. Founded in 2004, HighRes is headquartered in Beverly, Massachusetts, with European headquarters in Manchester, United Kingdom, and operates as part of the Axel Johnson group. Learn more at highres.com.
ABOUT INVOLVE DATA
Involve Data is a data strategy services firm that partners with pharmaceutical, biotech, tech-bio, and venture capital organizations on digital transformation, data architecture, lab automation strategy, and AI and machine learning enablement, translating scientific intent into outcomes. Recent work includes AI enablement, greenfield NGS lab design, integrated digital ecosystems for tech-bio companies, and ongoing IT and data leadership for life science venture portfolios. Learn more at involvedata.com.
Cellario and HighRes are trademarks or registered trademarks of HighRes Biosolutions.
Contacts
MEDIA CONTACTS
HighRes: Tom Rawlins, VP Marketing · [email protected] · +1 508 212-4881
Involve Data: Ciara He, Partner · [email protected]
