Accelerating ideas

Published on 12/04/2021

Initiated out of a need to build a space in which people can brainstorm new ideas, Hugo Avila and his colleague William Foley created the Tech Hub, formerly known as NXT studio, some three years ago on the Novartis Campus in Basel. Now, as part of the Applied Technology Innovation unit in IT, Hugo Avila is leading a project to establish “the Garage” as a sort of high-end engineer’s hobby room.    

Inspired by the hands-on spirit of technologists at Novartis – a spirit much like that which imbued the founders of the world’s leading technology companies, who usually started in a small garage – the project team from IT and REFS set up a commmunity space to allow for engineered digital solutions.     

“As a key enabler for the digital transformation, we in IT saw the need for a workspace in which software and hardware engineers across the company can collaborate and bring their ideas to life. We received enthusiastic support from the organization and leadership,” Hugo Avila told live magazine in mid-March, when he was still putting the final touches to the Garage. His hope was that the workspace, which is located in the food tower on the Campus, could contribute to some important innovations.   

Roughly six months later – equipped with a 3D printer, virtual reality headsets and other useful technical gear such as a soldering iron – the place is brimming with life. Since its opening in July, innovation has been in full flow.

One of the earliest users of the Garage were Moritz Freidank and Damir Bucar, who are software and machine-learning engineers. They use the space to develop and test machine-learning algorithms in a project called Adverse Events Brain. The algorithm is intended to help monitor social media and other channels for adverse event reports for Novartis products, which currently need to be collected manually.  

The aim is to help reduce the manual effort by 90 percent, as well as lower overall costs. “The Garage provides a great environment to collaborate not just with my project team members, but also with other experts in an informal and educational way – we’re continuously learning from each other,” says Moritz Freidank.    

Sitting next to Moritz is Catalin Stanculescu, who is working in the area of natural language processing, translation and speech recognition. He shares Moritz’s view. “Being able to learn from each other and test out our ideas in real time accelerates our work,” he says, as he helps debug Moritz’s cloud computing environment.   

Another early user is Larry da Ponte, who worked in the Garage to test an infrared array sensor used in a prototype he developed. The sensor, named Grid Eye, transmits a thermal image in real time. The prototype collects data, such as the number of people in a room, and sends it to an Internet of Things (IoT) service for analysis.

“We wanted a test subject like an infrared sensor detecting thermal signatures as a topic for our investigation of IoT services. As we develop standards for Novartis IoT projects, we will help to automate processes like this and others,” Larry da Ponte explains. The Grid Eye prototype helped in defining and identifying standards for the technical services to enable IoT.

Da Ponte expects IoT services to pick up and become more commonplace, helping Novartis become more efficient. According to consultancy Gartner, there will be over 26 billion connected devices by 2020, a huge network where connected things “talk” to each other. “This is something that we as a company could tap into. But at the moment we are at a very early stage.”

Hugo Avila himself uses the Garage to test the latest virtual and augmented reality technologies, as he leads a project along with NTO and HR to deploy these technologies at scale across many sites.

Abhi Verma, who leads the ATI team, is hopeful that the Garage can live up to its mission to provide associates with a creative workspace in which they can turn around their ideas. “We are not trying to sell solutions by telling associates to do this or that. We’re creating awareness and trying to educate the general population about the huge range of possibilities.”  

“An example is the supply chain blockchain demonstrator we created using Lego blocks,” Abhi Verma says, pointing to a Lego robot. “We are encouraging a sense of community and ‘give back’ by holding technical sessions in exchange for using the space.”

While the Garage is in its infancy, it may well become a success, as indicated by the development of the Tech Hub. Started three years back, this workplace has become a hot meeting point with many associates in Basel, who like the setup of this collaborative workplace because it is uniquely adapted to user needs.    

An S-shaped bench and the large computer screens on the walls are the only items that are fixed in the Tech Hub – the rest can be moved and adapted to individual needs.   

Each area of the Tech Hub is named for its specific function. In the Blue Sky area, for example, associates can brainstorm and test speculative ideas. The so-called Cloud 9 area is equipped to allow associates to explore new technologies for potential use and application in patients.

Teams that received support at the Tech Hub in the past include groups from the Genesis Labs project as well as teams from Medical Affairs, Global Drug Development and IT.    

Many new technologies were tested, including a sensor that can be attached to an inhaler to help patients better manage conditions such as asthma. Another included an adherence solution in the form of a digitally connected pill bottle. The bottle was set up to remind patients to take their medication by playing a tune and lighting up a ring around the bottle and even calling the patient via an automated messaging system.    

“The Tech Hub has become a very lively space and allows teams to organize very creative and high-performance-oriented meetings,” Hugo Avila declares. “While the Tech Hub is really a brainstorming space, the Garage allows teams to work with their hands, so to speak, and really make their ideas come to life.”

Whether the Garage will become as famous as the car shed in which Hewlett-Packard was founded remains to be seen. Its early popularity shows, however, that it can become an important space for bringing ideas to life.