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How Merck is Driving Innovation with the Microsoft HoloLens

Focus on: Empower Employees, Optimize Operations

As Megan Mackey, a Senior Scientist at Merck, works in the lab, it looks like she may be conducting an orchestra of lab equipment. She’s waving her hands in the air, pointing to invisible things, making push and pull motions with her fingers, and seemingly calling out commands to no one. To the untrained eye, it may look like something out of a science fiction film.

However, Megan is actually using a HoloLens, a wearable device that allows her to interact with a smart bot to troubleshoot and solve problems in real time. The bot gives her access to standard operation procedures and important information to help her follow compliance requirements in the lab without ever having to take her sight off the task at hand.
Employee Empowerment with the Microsoft HoloLensAs one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, Merck, is constantly looking for new ways to innovate and empower their scientists to develop products and services that impact people’s lives around the world. So, when they needed a solution to give their employees hands-free access to information, they partnered with Microsoft to create the HoloLens.

Merck employees joined Microsoft to discuss the company’s needs. While the final product may look like futuristic technology, the process to create it was rather simple. Once Microsoft understood Merck’s needs, they were able to build the bot, connect with their database, and integrate the HoloLens into the company’s operations. The bot is currently in the proof of concept stage at Merck.

“Here at Merck, innovation is at the heart of everything we do. We used the Microsoft HoloLens and Microsoft Bot Framework to help build a solution for the scientists,” says Gopinath Janakiraman, Director of IT Architecture.

By leveraging the HoloLens, Merck’s research and development scientists are able to work on projects without the burden of manually typing in queries to access information. Instead, they use the voice-enabled reality HoloBot to quickly access information and drive innovation.

Through digital transformation with the HoloLens proof of concept, Merck employees now have the tools they need to optimize their time and operations. With the HoloLens, the future of pharmaceutical discovery could be just around the corner.

Watch the video below to learn more about Merck’s digital transformation and how they are using the HoloLens to drive innovation.


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