Why We Started Form Bio and How We Want to Advance the Scientific Field

We're in a remarkable period of exponential growth for humanity. As a result, how we live and work is in a constant state of rapid transition. And while virtually every aspect of life as we know it has experienced dramatic change over the last several decades, science and information technology have been especially subject to this transformation. 

In science, consider the ongoing explosion of recent innovations. Biology has gone from sequencing the entire human genome to biotech-enabled treatments to the rise of biologics and gene therapies in a short time. As a result, new, game-changing breakthroughs are arriving at a breakneck pace.

That same rate of innovation is at least as rapid in technology. First came computers, then cellular technology just a few decades later, and now internet-enabled apps designed to satisfy virtually any use case, convenience, or whim in our personal and professional lives.

We continuously make significant leaps in science and information technology, but this growth doesn't align across the two fields.

In biology specifically, the scale of change is best illustrated by the cost of genetic sequencing, which has plummeted from $3B to $100 in the last three decades. But the convergence of software and biology hasn't kept pace with the independent progressions of the two respective fields. The state-of-the-art software demonstrates this misalignment for biologists and bioinformaticists. Disparate, underdeveloped software and other tech tools are under-equipped for the increasingly large, diverse datasets generated today—holding back potentially colossal leaps in sequencing and other avenues of scientific discovery.

As computing and software innovations stampede forward, there's an apparent and ever-growing mismatch between what's computationally possible and what's practical for biologists to take on as new competencies in DevOps, data science, machine learning, and other modern technical specializations.

And this is where the problem lies. When biologists are spending time learning how to create and wrangle Python scripts or trying to organize terabytes of data, they're not doing biology. Hence, in biology, we're living with too much potential for unfulfilled potential.

We believe biologists should not need to become programmers, data scientists or system administrators to do their best work. Expecting them to master these specializations by default is holding back scientific innovation.

At Form, we see a massive opportunity for a different, better path. We've assembled a world-class software engineering team, including DevOps, data science, ML engineering, and more. But perhaps most importantly, we've brought these specialists together with world-class bioinformaticians and computational biologists. These software professionals, life scientists, and data scientists are collaborating to build the next-generation software platform for unlocking the full potential of biology–by giving biologists access to a modern, comprehensive system that delivers the computational power they need without the complexity that too often slows down or sidetracks them.

Seizing this opportunity means making it far less challenging to manage large datasets, securely track, process, and share data, and publish resulting analyses. At Form, take that pursuit further by making it strikingly, delightfully, easy to utilize these data and workflows through a modern user experience.

As a company, our mission is to empower scientists to accelerate their discoveries. Core to fulfilling that mission is partnering and collaborating with scientific professionals across industry and academia, which we're heavily focused on as we prepare our platform for broader availability.

In that spirit of collaboration, and as we move forward in our journey of empowering scientific discovery, we invite you to join, connect, and partner with us. As we grow, there will be many opportunities to work together. We invite you to follow along on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, keep up to date by subscribing to our newsletter and consider how you might contribute directly to our mission by joining our growing team.

Authors Andrew Busey and Kent Wakeford are Co-CEOs of Form Bio.