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By John Trigg, on May 8th, 2012 Here are two recent and interesting articles, representing two different perspectives on the adoption of Electronic Lab Notebooks. On the one hand we have a summary of the commercial strategies behind some of the recent merger and acquisition activity in the ELN market place: The Battle for the Lab (published in Chemical and Engineering News), and on the other hand we have an Open Notebook Science initiative from Carl Boettiger, Welcome to my Lab Notebook, based on a freely available blogging tool. Both make very interesting reading, and in their own way illustrate the great paradox in the choice of systems for laboratory use: closed or open. Admittedly, there are numerous constraints facing industry when it comes to technology choices, and opting for a blogging tool isn’t necessarily one of the options, but when you consider that the underlying generic requirement for replacing a paper lab notebook is an authoring tool capable of creating a compound document, then the disparity between the open and closed options is stark.
By John Trigg, on April 2nd, 2012 Although this site concentrates mainly on technical issues related to laboratory operations, we do occasionally touch on culture and behavioural issues as well. I like to portray the laboratory world as an ecosystem dependent on technology, processes and people. I’ve been writing a few things for Pharma IQ under the title Managing the Laboratory Ecosystem, which is my way of looking at knowledge management from a laboratory perspective.
If you are a knowledge management practitioner, or just interested in the subject, and you live within reasonable distance of London, David Gurteen will be running Knowledge Cafe Workshop, London, 2 May 2012
David is a pioneer in the use of Knowledge Cafes and other conversational tools in business and has been facilitating Knowledge Cafes and teaching people how to run them around the world for the last 10 years.
This Knowledge Cafe workshop is designed to help you:
- Understand the role and importance of conversation in organizations and in business
- Design and run Gurteen Knowledge Cafés and other forms of Cafe
- Solve specific business problems and challenges using Knowledge Cafes
- Use other conversational tools and techniques to address organizational and business issues
Location: Royal Society of Arts, London
Date: Wednesday 2 May 1, 09:30 – 16:30
Full Price: GBP 495 + VAT; Public Sector Price: GBP395 + VAT
If you cannot afford the price because you are a student or a charity for example but would like to participate then call David Gurteen on +44 7774 178 650
For more information & to register for the workshop see here: http://bit.ly/H8etxW
By John Trigg, on March 16th, 2012 Our media partner Pharma IQ, a division of IQPC, is conducting a survey on Predicted Trends for 2015 in Laboratory Informatics. Please follow the link to participate in this survey, and feel free to invite any of your colleagues to contribute. The information will be used to compile a report on trends and challenges in the laboratory informatics industry, so to make the data meaningful, the more respondents the better.
By John Trigg, on March 8th, 2012 IQPC’s SmartLabs Exchange celebrated it’s 7th birthday in Brussels with two and a half days of presentations, discussions and meetings on topics related to laboratory innovation, data management, informatics, operational excellence and automation. In general, the presentations covered a range of key laboratory informatics topics such as data management, integration, and the whys and wherefores of informatics tools, with a particular emphasis on productivity, sharing and collaboration.
A key feature of the SmartLabs Exchange is an emphasis on interaction with a number of discussion and ‘think tank’ sessions scheduled in to the programme. As an aid to initiate discussion and networking, each delegate had provided, in advance of the conference, a list of the three top projects/issues in their companies. A rough categorisation of this list gives some sense of the priority of the most important issues companies are currently facing:
- Data issues (management, archiving, analysis) – 46 votes
- Integration – 32 votes
- Informatics tools (SDMS, LIMS, ELN) – 26 votes
- Culture (sharing, collaboration) – 21 votes
- Automation – 19 votes
- Productivity – 19 votes
It is clear from this brief survey, and from discussion sessions, that the ability to collect data is outpacing our ability to process, analyse and manage it. Nevertheless, the demands for integrated automation and informatics tools continues to grow, although the functional convergence in commercial products in the LIMS/SDMS/LES/ELN area is causing some confusion. There was a clear recognition amongst delegates that despite the plethora of technology solutions available to laboratories, one of the key criteria in achieving successful progress is the need to change some of the underlying cultural and behavioural habits that are not so well tuned to technology our to the concepts of sharing and collaborating. The prospect of introducing social tools into the mix to address some of these issues came under some scrutiny in a facilitated discussion session, a sign, perhaps, that laboratories may be starting to look more broadly for help in addressing ‘knowledge management’ concerns.
The more startling example of looking elsewhere for ideas came in a presentation by Stephen Rose of McLaren Applied Technologies, who described the data collection, data management and data visualisation processes used in Formula 1 motor racing to make real time tactical and strategic decisions. Processes in the Life Sciences industry may run at a slower pace than formula 1 cars, but GSK are already partnering with McLaren to investigate data exploration possibilities based on the competencies that McLaren have developed.
By John Trigg, on March 3rd, 2012 The commercial ELN industry is well into its second decade, and although the market penetration is still relatively low, a number of organisations , mainly in the Life Sciences sector, are leading the way in replacing paper lab notebooks with ELNs. There are plenty of case studies that justify the transition and which report quantitative benefits in productivity, improvements in IP protection, and numerous unquantifiable personal productivity gains, mainly around sharing and collaboration.
The situation in academia is interesting; although the principles of the scientific method are the same for industry and academia, there are practical circumstances that can lead to differences in requirements. In a very basic sense, the objective in industry is to utilise experimentation for the benefit of the organisation in the development of new or improved products or services. In academia, the objective is to expand the knowledgebase of science, but being realistic, this is often for the benefit of the individual scientists or team (to secure further funding, enhance one’s reputation, improve employment prospects, etc.) Increasing concerns within academia about (a) good record keeping (to facilitate further funding), (b) the value of intellectual property and (c) about exploiting collaborative opportunities with industry, may now lead to a greater requirement to utilise information technology to document and maintain records of laboratory experimentation.
The current take up of ELNs in academia is fragmented, and is comprised of relatively small teams of scientists, traditionally working in a more isolated fashion, and using a wide range of tools (home made, blogs, note-taking tools, and in some cases, commercial ELNs). The decision to convert to an ELN is therefore often based on the requirements of a small team, or in some cases, of an individual. Nevertheless, there seems to be a growing level of interest in the use of ELNs in academia, and here are a few links that make interesting reading.
An article by Jim Giles appeared in Nature in January: Going Paperless: The Digital Lab, which takes a broad view of creating a ‘digital’ lab, not necessarily restricted to academia, but the comments below the article emphasise a number of concerns about the transition from paper to electronic. In a similar vein, an item by Tom Phillips (Imperial College, London), the Death of my Paper Lab Book?, also covers a number of specific concerns, and the commitment to start using a Wiki- based solution. An example of Mediawiki, and iPads, being used as a Lab Notebook appeared in an interview, posed on a University of Melbourne website, with Dr Shelley Wickham of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School. The use of a commercial ELN in Cambridge University’s Chemistry Department is being tracked on the cameln blog, but perhaps the most ambitious project is ‘Towards a National ELN’ a sub-project of the EPSRC funded Dial-a-Molecule programme in the UK.
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