Qvios is designed to help lab professionals manage protocols, samples, and lab devices. It features an easy-to-use interface and a powerful workflow engine that supports complex, multi-step lab experiments and automated sample tracking. Qvios integrates lab devices into workflows through bidirectional communication and user-managed worklist templates.
Qvios is the missing link between laboratory data and operational execution.
End-to-end architecture, implementation, and deployment by Jori Blomqvist.
Qvios has a modern web application architecture with three distinct layers: a backend that handles user requests and communicates with a document database, a user-facing browser app, and a device link that handles communication between the backend and connected laboratory devices. The device link runs natively on the operating system of the device controlling computer.
Backend
Browser App
Database
Workflow Logic
Deployment
Security and Authentication
Device Integration
Qvios was built with web technologies to enable better distribution, updates, and UX than traditional lab software. The goal was a single interface for controlling lab functions and devices, balancing ease of use for non-technical users with the flexibility required for complex workflows.
To support multi-step, branching lab workflows, a document database was chosen to represent experiments. Each experiment is split into procedure objects, with relationships modeled within the parent experiment. This approach supports branching, merging, and repeating procedures while maintaining robust data validation.
Unlike many ELN solutions and other lab software that store experimental data as plain text, Qvios stores experiments as structured, connected documents. This early decision enabled:
The same model later powered automatic sample tracking and built-in analytics, allowing users to explore and visualize experimental data without manual data wrangling.
For visualization, D3 was used for its instant updates and scientifically accurate, customizable charts.
One of the biggest visualization challenges was comparing different experimental instances. The phase-alignment feature was iterated on several times to synchronize experiment timelines and align comparable parameters across runs. In practice, it proved unusable for most use cases and was replaced by a summary page. On this page, users can create their own summaries by adding data from each experiment to graphs of their choice. This gave users more control and turned comparisons into a flexible workflow rather than a fixed algorithm.
Many lab devices communicate with other systems via a shared network drive, where raw data is written to files and later retrieved either automatically or manually. To improve this workflow, Qvios needed a solution that could run close to the device, access the local file system, and communicate directly with the backend. Qvios Link was built with Electron because it:
This architecture allowed Qvios Link to serve as a bridge between legacy device interfaces and the modern web-based Qvios backend, while preserving a unified user experience across both.
Looking back, a few themes stand out:
Together, these decisions helped Qvios feel both powerful and approachable, despite the inherent complexity of modern lab workflows.
