Webinar Recap: Supercharging Chromatography Workflows with FAIR Data Use Cases

ZONTAL recently partnered with Astrix for an insightful webinar, “Supercharge Your Chromatography Workflows with FAIR Data Use Cases,” featuring Kelsey Boyle, Director of Product Management at ZONTAL. This session explored how laboratories can revolutionize their chromatography workflows, enhance data accessibility, and leverage FAIR data principles to drive efficiency, compliance, and innovation.

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways from the Webinar

Addressing Chromatography Data Management Challenges

Laboratories in life sciences, pharma, and biotech face growing data management issues due to fragmented systems, proprietary file formats, and increasing regulatory pressures. Chromatography workflows are particularly impacted due to fragmented data across ELNs, LIMS, and vendor-specific platforms, as well as a lack of file format standardization from vendors like Agilent, Waters, and Thermo Fisher.

Expanding global regulatory requirements and the growing volume and complexity of chromatography data also present significant challenges. As AI and machine learning become more prevalent, these inefficiencies hinder data readiness. Additionally, mergers and acquisitions introduce legacy data systems that complicate integration and standardization.

ZONTAL’s FAIR Data Approach

ZONTAL addresses these challenges by providing a centralized, scalable, and AI-ready data platform built on FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).

This approach unifies chromatography data across vendors and systems, enhances real-time compliance tracking, and creates audit-ready trails. Automated data standardization supports faster, more consistent insights, while the structured data is optimized for predictive analytics and machine learning. Through its partnership with the Allotrope Foundation, ZONTAL aligns with global data standards, ensuring long-term interoperability.

Method Standardization Across Instruments

Standardizing chromatography methods across instruments and sites is crucial for ensuring reproducibility and accuracy. ZONTAL supports this by enabling centralized access to chromatography methods, normalizing HPLC parameters, and allowing seamless method execution across vendor platforms. With the ability to overlay chromatograms side-by-side, users can easily compare performance metrics such as peak resolution and retention time.

Data Integration & Transformation for FAIR Readiness

ZONTAL automates the ingestion and harmonization of chromatography data from various sources. By enriching datasets with metadata, the platform enhances searchability and traceability. These structured, FAIR-ready datasets enable real-time overlays and support AI-powered insights. Laboratories benefit from consistent data that can be trusted and reused across multiple workflows.

Supporting IP Protection and Compliance

ZONTAL helps laboratories maintain secure, validated archives of chromatography experiments, ensuring audit-readiness and regulatory compliance. With detailed data trails and standardized FAIR exports, organizations can safeguard intellectual property and prepare data for legal or patent purposes. This structured approach also simplifies regulatory submissions and strengthens data integrity over time.

Harmonizing Data Post-Merger

Post-merger integration often brings together multiple, incompatible data systems. ZONTAL simplifies this process by ingesting and standardizing legacy chromatography data into a unified format. The platform reduces IT overhead through system consolidation, ensures consistent governance practices, and enables seamless cross-site comparisons. This ensures long-term access to historical and current data within a single, scalable environment.

ZONTAL’s Chromatography Viewer in Action

The session concluded with a look at ZONTAL’s Chromatography Viewer, a powerful tool that brings chromatography data to life. This interactive viewer allows users to compare results across vendors, overlay chromatograms for deeper analysis, and enrich data with annotations, chemical structures (SMILES), and linked audit trails.

It also enables export of visualizations for regulatory reporting and supports real-time collaboration within a centralized FAIR data environment. With the Chromatography Viewer, laboratories gain actionable insights and streamlined workflows.