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Solu Platform v Conventional Bioinformatics Pipeline

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Solu

Genomic surveillance demands speed and scalability that conventional bioinformatics pipelines struggle to provide. While command-line tools were once the standard, their fragmented nature creates bottlenecks that hinder real-time analysis.

This direct comparison reveals how a modern, unified platform like Solu overcomes these challenges to meet the needs of today's methods.

What is Solu?

Solu is a fully automated cloud platform for microbial genomics. It supports bacterial and fungal WGS from raw reads to AMR profiling, phylogenetic analysis, and cluster detection. It is designed for research, routine surveillance, infection prevention, and public health response.

“Solu reduced bioinformatics turnaround time from weeks to minutes during outbreak investigations using Nanopore sequencing.” - PHF Science (ex ESR) & Awanui Labs, New Zealand

What are Conventional Pipelines?

Traditional WGS workflows rely on chaining together multiple command-line tools to process sequencing data from quality control to phylogenetic analysis. Each step typically requires separate software, manual configuration, and a high level of bioinformatics expertise.

A primary bottleneck is the fragmented nature of these workflows. A typical analysis might involve running raw reads through FastQC for quality checks, Trimmomatic for trimming, and BWA for alignment, followed by variant calling, typing, and phylogenetic tree construction using additional tools. Each step requires manual data handling, file format conversions, and specific command-line inputs, creating a disjointed and error-prone process that’s difficult to scale or standardize.

Solu Platform Compared to Conventional Pipelines

Solu moves beyond the constraints of traditional bioinformatics. Built from the ground up on a unified, cloud-native framework, Solu offers a faster, more accessible, and fully automated workflow that simply makes sense for the modern laboratory.

Solu Platform Conventional Pipeline
Workflow Unified, automated end-to-end workflow. Simple drag-and-drop upload initiates QC, assembly, typing, AMR detection, and phylogenetics. Fragmented, multi-step process using separate CLI tools; each stage requires manual configuration and coordination.
Analysis Speed Results in minutes. Solu's cloud architecture runs hundreds of samples in parallel and supports near real-time surveillance. Hours to days per sample. Sequential processing and hardware limits create analysis bottlenecks.
User Experience Intuitive UI designed for microbiologists, infection prevention teams, and clinicians. No coding required. Requires command-line proficiency, scripting, and tool-specific knowledge. High barrier to entry.
Hardware Requirements No specialized hardware required. Solu runs entirely in the cloud; users only need internet access. Often requires high-end local infrastructure, especially for large-scale or long-read analyses.
Accuracy & Reproducibility Validated against public scientific databases; consistent, automated results with version-controlled workflows. Results depend heavily on user skill, tool versions, and parameter choices, making reproducibility a challenge.
Data Management Centralized and secure. All reads, metadata, and results live in a single cloud environment, ready for collaboration. Scattered across machines, drives, and folders. Data silos are common; tracking and collaboration are difficult.
Updates & Maintenance Zero maintenance. Solu is continuously updated with the latest tools, reference databases, and pipelines. Users must manually install, update, and validate each tool in the workflow. Dependency management is a common pain point.
Expenses A single platform license replaces the need for multiple software tools. It also eliminates the overhead associated with managing conventional workflows – reducing both operational complexity and staff-related costs. Traditional pipelines often require multiple licensed tools and dedicated bioinformatics staff to manage them, driving up both software and personnel costs.

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