Pall: Bioprocessing's future is made of virtual reality

HakoBio is a virtual reality platform developed by life science marketing firm OUAT! alonside Pall Corporation to provide the biomanufacturing industry with a tool to help configure, visualise and feel processes & lab rooms.

The supplier of filtration, separations and purification products unveiled the platform at Bioprocess International Europe earlier this month in order to showcase its portfolio without the logistical burden of carrying and setting up equipment in Vienna, Austria, and is set to do the same at Interphex in New York City this week.

Wolfgang Weinkum, marketing manager at Pall said the platform allows drugmakers to plan their own facility - much like Ikea's online planning tool​, albeit for upstream and downstream equipment rather than flat-pack kitchen units - and then visualise the plant through the use of the virtual reality headset.

This luddite of a journalist was sceptical but picked up the equipment to try it himself and was instantly converted, though whether this is the future of marketing or an addictive gimmick remains to be seen.

Either way, the platform is now available to other players from the bioprocess/bioproducution world, a spokesman from OUAT! told this publication. 

Pall's shake-up of its portfolio showcasing came a year after rival firm GE Healthcare displayed its offerings using Xbox Kinect sensor technology which Biopharma-Reporter captured on slightly less impressive technology at BPI Europe 2015.​