Blog

The direction of travel for laboratories is always a tricky one to predict as we're in a race with the rate of technological development and who knows what might crop up in the next few decades that could utterly change the game. But what we have seen is a clear narrative when it comes to lab software, how it is sought out, how it is applied and what that leaves us in a fair...

It’s no longer a secret that Cell & Gene Therapy is now considered the future of healthcare. That said, the number of market approvals has only just about hit double figures, each of which are still experiencing their own commercialisation hurdles that we are learning from every day. Nonetheless we have completed the cycle 10 times over, we know we can do it and we ha...

To warn you, this is a little bit of self-promotion! But what I am aiming to do is clarify why I chose to recruit within the Biotech sector, specifically Synthetic Biology and Cell & Gene Technologies.  I think it is essential to know what direction you are taking and why, otherwise success and true motivation will be elusive.  Also from a business point of view to be su...

It is now almost two weeks since myself and my colleague Steve Smith volunteered at Rarefest and I have to say I am still so inspired by the people we met, the stories that were told and the extraordinary performances we saw. Since then I have been reviewing the literature that we took away from the event and have been further inspired, reading about new developments in the ...

The new regulation surrounding medical devices came into force on 25th May 2017 and is set to make some major changes to the industry over the coming years and will be compulsory from May 2020 for the MDR and May 2022 for the IVDR. One thing that struck me whilst reading through articles detailing all the necessary changes was the employee numbers needed to implement and ...

(hint: it is completely different to presenting anywhere else!) So…you may have given loads of presentations before, to clients, customers, potential investors, colleagues or lecture theatres. You may even have made a wedding speech or two. You may have a natural charisma and engaging personality and feel perfectly comfortable standing up in front of an audience. Or, on t...

I am in constant contact with validation professionals and often think about what makes people successful in this sector, besides having strong technical skills. It is important to understand what other skills are needed when carrying out such an important role, because ultimately it will have an impact on the result of the work you do. Jim Harper, a highly experienced Valid...

As anyone who works within the LIMS industry well knows the development of the digital lab has been a long time coming and has yet more ground to cover. But we're well established enough now, and the market has had a long time to set itself up, so now we can start to draw a clear picture of how the LIMS market is reflected in the world, where the big business is and where it...

My daughter is 6 years old and one of the wisest people I have ever known. A few days ago I asked her the question that I used to dread being asked when I was a child; the question that is so open-ended that it seems exciting to ask, but is rather unfair to the recipient: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I almost kicked myself for saying it. As soon as the wo...

Two months ago, we gained a new colleague here at Next Phase. Steve Smith is our new Head of Rare Disease and Gene Therapy and his appointment started me thinking about the rare disease sector and how medical devices play a part here. A rare disease is defined by the European Union as one that affects less than 5 in 10,000 of the general population, whilst the FDA define ...

#everythingCRISPR The curious scientist should be excited to know about the creation of The CRISPR Journal is here!!!! February 2018............ The New Year is here and an exciting one it is expected to be. CRISPR technology and ground-breaking advances within the research associated to CRISPR is changing the world. Researchers are deploying CRISPR across a wide range...

I have been asked many times what the dress code will be for an interview. Whilst it seems like a question with a straightforward answer, it isn’t always that simple! When your clients are pharmaceutical and biotech businesses it obviously raises the question in a candidate’s head “What is the dress code?”, because no-one wants to be under-dressed or over-dressed. A coupl...

Technology is ever evolving and manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to give their product the market edge. It is unsurprising that communication between humans and machines is at the forefront of this, after all we are becoming ever dependent on technology and what it can offer us. From Alexa reminding us to pick up milk to our iPhone’s providing us with navigat...

As a specialism, Validation attracted me as a Recruiter when I supported an SME company to find a Validation Technician for them. So then, I researched the topic and started to talk to professionals within the pharmaceutical industry to gain a deeper understanding of their profession. It is such a broad and varied professionalism and in my opinion, it requires a range of ver...

The Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and the CRISPR associated Cas system is the latest addition to genome editing derived from components of the bacterial immune system. CRISPR permits targeted gene editing offering a simple, rapid and broad application to genome editing. In 2012 researchers had realized that CRISPR could be adapted, eng...

Whilst updating myself on industry news I have found an abundance of articles discussing the problem and potential solutions to ‘surgical smoke’. This was an alien term to me so I began to read on with interest. Surgical smoke is the gaseous by-product produced by electro-surgery, laser tissue ablation, ultrasonic scalpel dissection, high speed drilling or burring, or ind...

When I moved to the UK nearly 7 years ago I would have never thought in my life that one day I’d be going back to my roots and my childhood bedroom will replace the office for a week. This happened though last week, as my amazing boss was happy to accommodate my needs to return to Hungary for a dentistry appointment. I have worked from home before for a day but not for a ...

The statistics related to deaths caused by drug and alcohol misuse are shocking and are unfortunately a global problem. In 2016 the Office for National Statistics recorded 7,327 premature deaths from alcohol and 2,593 deaths due to drug abuse in the UK alone. Similar patterns can be seen across the world with some parts of the US fighting an Opioid Epidemic, with the Nationa...

I had already heard about chatbots, briefly, at the recruitment agency expo a couple of months ago and then later it came up in a social media training session. I must be honest, I didn’t exactly pay too much attention at the time, though I have recently come across a couple of articles about recruiting chatbots. So, I was intrigued to take a look at what exactly is a chatbo...

Parkinson’s UK estimates that 1 in every 350 people in the UK is affected by Parkinson’s disease, which is roughly 145,000 people, with millions being affected worldwide. This is a horrible disease without any current cure and without one definitive test. So, due to common misdiagnoses the figures are conservative and may actually be up to 40% higher, also when it is diagnos...