Voice technology and fully virtual digital assistants are becoming increasingly prevalent in many industries, including the scientific laboratory. This environment can greatly benefit from the use of hands-free digital assistants due to the fact that scientists regularly need access to tools and information while performing bench work. The use of a digital assistant in this environment has the potential to streamline laboratory work and reduce the chances of human error due to contamination and the context switching involved in moving between experiments and information storage media. Because the particular protocols and reagents used by each laboratory are often different, there is a need to create custom digital assistants for individual laboratories. In this technical brief we describe a custom software and web application, referred to as the HelixAI platform, that can be used to create digital assistants for individual scientific laboratories. Digital assistants created with this platform can be accessed through any Alexa-enabled smart speaker device. Here we describe the process by which labs can use this platform to create their own digital assistants, along with a description of the underlying technology. An assistant containing information from the scientific company New England Biolabs (NEB) has been created using this software and will serve as an example throughout this paper.
Keywords: Alexa; Artificial Intelligence; Digital Assistant; Lab Assistant; Smart Speakers; Virtual Assistant.
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