I scribble notes on a pad when I conduct interviews for my business. I don’t write many words because I’m trying to understand what people are saying and can’t write and think at the same time. (Half-Polish, can’t chew gum either). My notes are becoming more difficult to reread after a period of time too because my handwriting skills have diminished. Except for my grocery shopping list, I rarely use paper Post Its anymore, preferring electronic versions that are available on most newer PCs and phones. Like most people with Smart phones, I take out mine out frequently so see the reminders often. So this approach works well for me. I do have a paper scribble pad (recycled paper!) that I use every day with a pencil to capture transient bits of information that I use during the day. I throw out the scribbles next day and start a new sheet. This is still more efficient and convenient than a computer based approach.

The way that we read information to acquire knowledge has been gradually transforming. Before electronics, brief communication of information (today’s tweets, text messages or emails) was commonly done via oral interaction or sign images like smoke signals, semaphores, etc. The telegraph and telephone replaced these and has broadened the potential audience. Global electronic networks are the phase that we are in now. These kinds of communications usually only convey relatively small bits of information or knowledge. Think about trying to get a university degree by only reading tweets and text messages. That’s not going to get it done.

The applicability of collaborative space has been spotty. There are some specific successes, but in general this idea has not expanded significantly over the past 20 years. Remember Lotus Notes?

Conveying more complex concepts and ideas, requires a much more structured use of many words than these communication vehicles can easily provide. Most people scan through pages bought up by web search results looking for key words of phrases. They rarely read a page word by word.

So what’s the best medium to read a book or long document? I can tolerate reading no more than 3 pages max word for word on my PC screen. Some days, like today, it’s less than one page. It’s the screen angle and overall brightness that gets to me. You can carry around and tilt paper pages, books and eReaders to accommodate your sitting or standing position. Also, most eReaders have the capability of increasing font size which I often do when my eyes get tired at the end of a day. They also are not overly bright, but have good black/white contrast. Most models can’t be read in the dark. I often print a few pages of information to read and then reuse the paper for scribbling. I don’t keep the printed sheets for very long.

I print fewer items to read than I did last year and think that this is because I am scanning, skimming speed reading more. Everyone seems to be doing this and I’m not sure whether it is good or bad. Are we learning less and just recycling information more?

When paper was king, I read many articles and books word for word then composed my original work. I’m sure I plagiarized some things without giving credit to the proper author, but I (as do many university professors) are seeing many articles, blogs and white papers that are primarily information that has been cut and pasted from other sources and advertised as “original” work.

I think that we have to be more selective in the use of our time to acquire new knowledge. Texting, tweeting, information skimming, social networking and other activities can take away too many hours every day and inhibit our capability to compose original ideas.

Electronic Lab Notebooks / Lab Information Management Systems
Labtronics Inc. has released a Connector for Nexxis ELN that allows the Electronic Laboratory Notebook to connect to any LIMS.
Nexxis ELN makes use of the industry standard integration tool, LimsLink, to provide direct connection with any LIMS. The connection provides bi-directional connectivity allowing the Electronic Notebook to retrieve sample lists from LIMS and report results back to LIMS

In my opinion, there are two different sets of requirements that emerge from a progressively maturing marketplace. Most of the meetings held by commercial conference organisers tend to be based on a business model that is aimed at serving vendors’ interests by targeting prospects. The technical programme focuses on case studies and broader, state of the industry/technology-type content. In the laboratory world, we’ve seen these conferences become well established in the LIMS and ELN domains. However, the International LIMS Conferences disappeared some years ago. It may be just a matter of time before a similar fate awaits the ELN conferences.

Over time, and as more delegates progress from being prospects to becoming users, the requirements change. In time, a ‘user’ community emerges whose interests are directed not so much towards the purchasing process, but more towards business and technology trends. As a consequence the requirement for the content of a conference has a different focus; you could say the emphasis shifts from the past (this is how we did it, or this is how to do it), to the future (what’s coming next, what will it mean, and how will we cope).

This changing interest requires a different model with less emphasis on sales and marketing, and more on emerging or evolving business and technology strategies and trends. To a limited extent, this can be, and is, addressed through the online community. Blogs and discussion groups can deal with this up to a point, despite the restrictions of sharing opinion on-line when you are an employee. But there’s a good number of people who believe that face-to-face meetings are an ideal compliment to on-line communication, and this perhaps explains why there is a sense of frustration that this need is not being met very well at the moment. The challenge for the commercial conference organisers is whether they can evolve a successful business model to address this changing need. In the early part of the life cycle of the big LIMS and ELN conferences, delegates had more questions than answers. When there are more answers than questions, its time to move on.

A lot of the early projects I implemented concerned the conversion of paper based business operations to computer based. Through these experiences I learned that the biggest obstacle to implementing new processes was peoples’ inherent fear of change. This is a basic characteristic of people that has been developed through evolution. Men are driven by nature to find the highest place for them within a hierarchy and are motivated to protect their position and move up when possible. Women have different motivations which are concerned with social influence. But they too will fight to maintain their position and status.

Fear is an emotional response to a perceived threat. It is a basic survival mechanism occurring in response to a specific stimulus, such as pain or the threat of danger.
I have seen all of the following common reactions to fear in some people when I was trying to introduce change:

• Anger
• Increased blood pressure
• Tightening of muscles
• Dilation of the pupils (to let in more light)
• Increased sweating

If you see that a lot of people are reacting with fear to the changes you are proposing, things have gone very wrong and most likely the program that you are trying to implement is in serious danger of failing. Fear is contagious and will spread rapidly.

Here are a few hints on how to minimize the fear reaction.

A person trying to introduce change must first of all be likeable and unthreatening. This is much more important initially than extensive explanations about why the change will be a good thing for all. You can be likeable when you sincerely try to learn about people whose job scope will be affected. Be a friend; don’t push your agenda too hard at the beginning.

For many people change will mean making some information that they currently control more public. They will cease to be the exclusive “go to” person. This is the “I know something important that no one else knows” power position. Their new role will be to manage the life cycle of the information collection assuring that it is complete and up to date. If they are the information authors the new process should advertise that they are the “inventors” and will fortify their position.
Explain this to them. It may take a little while to sink in, but most of them will get it.

There will always be a few people whose fear level will be too high to overcome initially. However, after they see that others are not afraid they will come around.

Iron Mountain Incorporated has expanded its partnership with InterVision to allow the Santa Clara, Calif. IT firm to offer users of NetApp and Microsoft Exchange Iron Mountain’s newly-acquired NearPoint(TM) solution for archiving, accessing and protecting email. InterVision’s customers can now enjoy high performance, manageability and lower operating costs by combining leading technology from NetApp and Iron Mountain in a single integrated solution for managing Microsoft Exchange.

ELN / LIMS
In order to minimize disruption to their existing processes and procedures, Novozymes chose to develop their own, custom-built ELN solution. By taking their lab processes digital, Novozymes saves the time it takes for teams of scientists to assemble and authorize paper-based documentation. Through the ELN, documents proving scientific discovery and product inventions (which are later used in patent applications) are approved and trusted via standard digital signatures, and made electronically available to an unlimited number of researchers from remote locations, for years into the future. The potential benefits of enhanced collaboration and document control influenced Novozymes’ decision to base their ELN solution on a SharePoint foundation, a document management platform which they were already using for various other business processes. The addition of digital signatures to the ELN makes the entire solution electronic through-out.

We generate more and more data in the pursuit of further scientific knowledge, and paradoxically, the more we know, the less certain we become, and so we need more data to seek the truth; the perpetual data machine. Data volumes grow to overwhelming levels; we need to store it somewhere for future reference, and for re-interpretation. We may also need it for regulatory or legal purposes which means we may need to keep it a long time. We may need to transfer it to other programmes for processing. We may need to reduce it to graphical images in order to understand it. We may need to derive a set of conclusions for inclusion in reports or presentations. We may need to import data from external agencies, such as CROs. And we know that data volumes will still continue to grow.

And yet, we don’t have any accepted intentional standards for the interchange of laboratory data; we don’t have any agreed integration standards or strategies for data communication; we cannot be confident that today’s applications, operating systems and media will survive for as long as we need the data to survive. All in all, it is not a healthy situation or one that inspires confidence, so what hope is there that it could ever get better? There are perhaps three alternative means by which the situation could change. Firstly, by force; if a regulatory or legal agency were to demand that all data comply with international standards, then the industry would need to respond, but this seems highly unlikely, certainly in the short term. Secondly, by community action; there have been several worthy attempts to evolve international standards either through the adoption of commercially based de facto standards, or by ‘standards’ associations formulating standards. In some instances, this has worked out well. For example, the adoption of PDF and PDF/A as ISO standards has shown that a global demand for document standards can be achieved by adopting a de facto standard. However, most initiatives with laboratory data have failed to acquire adequate uptake, and therefore have struggled to have any substantial impact. The third option is to sit back and wait for technology to provide us with a solution. To some extent this is already happening with the increasing use of XML for data interchange, but without suitable ontologies, there are still limitations.

Two specific community initiatives are currently addressing the laboratory data problem. The Pistoia Alliance, an initiative to provide an open foundation of data standards, ontologies and web-services to streamline the Pharmaceutical Drug Discovery workflow (Chemistry, Biological Screening, Logistics) through common business terms, relationships and processes. The work is currently being undertaken by member companies to develop open standards to support the interchange of data between CROs and their major customers in the Pharmaceutical industry. With a growing number of members, including vendors, the initiative faces a number of challenges, but probably represents the broadest approach to date to tackle the problem.

The other initiative is AnIML, the goal of which is to serve as the open-source development platform for a new XML standard for Analytical Chemistry Information. The project is a collaborative effort between many groups and individuals and is sanctioned by the ASTM under subcommittee E13.15. AnIML is receiving attention from vendors, a critical step towards adoption, but lacks the focused business case that is driving the Pistoia Alliance. Of course, if the Pistoia Aliiance were to adopt AnIML for analytical data interchange……….

The other consideration is how much of the Pistoia Alliance’s objectives have been addressed within the clinical world where a number of data interchange standards already exist. There are sufficient parallels with clinical chemistry at the laboratory level to believe that there may be no need to reinvent the wheel, but to adapt existing open standards to the requirements of non-clinical laboratories. The progress of Pistoia and AnIML will be observed closely

A common definition of a signature is: a mark or sign made by an individual on a document to signify knowledge, approval, acceptance, or obligation. I recall when I was in my 30’s creating a distinctive, artsy signature like you see on the U. S. Declaration of Independence. I employed this bold signature for many years with gusto. It was huge and overflowed all boundaries. Over the years the number of times that I had to write my signature decreased substantially. E-mail, banking on line and document work flow software contributed to this. I also became aware that very few people even looked at my signature except for over eager seasonal retail clerks. In fact, one recently questioned why my 6×2 inch signature on a receipt looked different from the 3×0.5 inch one on the back of my credit card. Duh!

I’ve noticed that more and more retail stores have installed hardware and software that has eliminated signatures on paper. After you swipe your credit card, you make your mark on a touch screen with a special “pen”. The legibility of my signature has virtually disappeared, but it doesn’t matter. Making the mark signifies acceptance of the transaction and is legally binding.

The E-Sign Act validates electronic contracts in interstate and foreign commerce. The act does not apply to certain types of documents, including wills, Divorce notices, and documents that are associated with court proceedings.

A digital signature is based on cryptography, which uses mathematical formulas, or algorithms, to scramble messages. Using encryption and decryption software, the sender can scramble the message and the recipient can unscramble it. To affix a digital signature to an electronic document, a signer must obtain electronic “keys.” The keys are assigned in pairs: a private key and a public key.

A person creates his keys using a software program. The digital signature is affixed to the electronic document using the private key. The “signer” types in a password, similar to a personal identification number for an automatic teller machine. The private key then generates a long string of numbers and letters that represent the digital signature, or public key. The recipient of the message runs a software program using this public key to authenticate that the document was signed by the private key and that the document has not been altered during transmission.

It is mathematically infeasible for a person to derive another person’s private key. The only way to compromise a digital signature is to give another person access to the signature software and the password to the private key.

Will name signatures eventually go away? Probably not for awhile. But the act of composing the name certainly will. We seem to be moving towards electronic signet rings and away from hand signed signatures.

Autonomy Corporation plc announced the availability of Autonomy Social Media Governance, the industry’s first solution designed to monitor, govern, and protect organizations across social media channels. Autonomy Social Media Governance extends Autonomy’s market-leading supervision, policy, and compliance platform – used today by the world’s leadto enable businesses to maintain compliance with new regulatory requirements for employees engaging on social media sites.

Iron Mountain Incorporated announced its Mimosa NearPoint™solution is the first email archiving solution to be certified for the Dell™ DX Object Storage Platform. The newly launched Dell DX Object Storage Platform is an integrated hardware and software solution designed to efficiently access, store and distribute billions of files and other digital content. With the NearPoint solution, the unified content management offering will help organizations reduce the costs and risks of managing unstructured data from Microsoft® Exchange®.

ELN / LIMS

Rescentris, Inc. announced iPad and iPhone platform clients to extend mobile use of its award-winning CERF Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN). CERF is a scalable, cross-platform software solution that helps life sciences and other R&D organizations migrate away from paper-based recordkeeping to increase efficiency and collaboration.

Don’t just stop to look at the big conferences, either. Also look around your general area. Last night’s joint meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA between LRIG NE (Laboratory Robotics Interest Group – New England) and the Boston LIMS/Laboratory Informatics group had 152 registrants and had to close event pre-registration due to a limitation on the size of the room. That local event had more people that some of the conferences have had.

We could ponder that the reason for the success of such an event is that, by creating an event with a combination of talks on discovery informatics, ELNs, and other related topics, that that well fits that area of the country. It is probably a strong fit for the local interest.

That’s not to say that the larger events don’t have strong sessions, as well, and they will often have several days of talks, rather than a single evening as this particular local event had.

The trade-off tends to come with the time taken out of work. A large conference can be expensive not just from conference and workshop registration fees, but also from the travel costs, and from time off of work. However, it is worthwhile to consider that immersing oneself in a conference for a few days allows more time to learn and interact. The overall benefit is high, but the justification to do so can be more difficult.

As your own budget cycle comes up, this next year, keep in-mind that the cost of attending any of these events will almost certainly provide an easy payback when you go through the trouble to find an event that is well-suited to your own purposes. Make this next budget year the one where you set aside the money to attend one of these events.

Also, take a look at Global Warming: Man or Myth?

But getting back to the point, locating computers in the laboratory is not new; we’ve been doing it for 40 years or so, and its getting easier. Flat screens, mounted on telescopic arms, membrane keyboards, on slide-away trays, and use of KVM devices to switch the desk-bound processor between use at the desk or in the lab, have all helped. Of course this doesn’t overcome the basic mobility of a paper notebook, and it remains to be seen whether mobile electronic devices will have any impact on laboratory work. Already there are ELNs that are iPad-ready; there’s a major LIMS vendor that has been advertising for some while, a LIMS running on an iPhone. It is possible that these mobile devices may offer the possibility of capturing data, notes and ideas that can be synced back to a laboratory system so that the chore of sitting down and fully documenting an experiment can be conducted in an office environment.

But what if…..we were to use multimedia, rather than just text and images, to record experiments, or if the laboratory became a ‘Minority Report’ example of ubiquitous computing???? It may be some way away, but I suspect its not the ELN that is doomed.

The other news item appeared on the BBC website: ‘MI5 staff who lack computer skills made redundant’. (MI5 is the UK counter-intelligence service). In a round of compulsory and voluntary redundancies, MI5 staff lacking IT skills are being told that they are not wanted. Counter-terrorism is increasingly dependent on technology and officers have to adapt to keep up and to be completely comfortable using computers and the latest technology. This would never happen in a laboratory, would it?

I’m reminded of an unsubstantiated story from a few years ago, of a company that chose to implement an ELN by equipping their scientists with tablet devices, but were dismayed to find that the tablet proved to be a convenient tray for carrying samples around the laboratory. Apart from a smaller form factor, the typical Apple glossy surface and the lack of a protective rim, the iPad is unlikely to become a laboratory tray purely on safety grounds.

The LIMS market has reached a sufficient level of maturity that (I suspect) we all know what a LIMS is, and what it does. The same is not true for ELNs. For most people, an ELN is far more than a replacement for the paper lab notebook; it needs to provide the generic capability that the paper notebook provides, but it also needs to replace the traditional cut and paste (scissors and tape) with sophisticated electronic interfaces to other laboratory systems and processes that serve specific laboratory disciplines such as chemistry, biology and analytical or Q/A. As such, the authoring tool at the hub of an “ELN’ is the equivalent of the paper lab notebook, and everything else becomes a number of integration challenges that collectively represent an electronic, or integrated lab.

One of these integration challenges is of course the LIMS, and for most organisations an interface between the LIMS and the ELN is a key requirement. The LIMS does all of the sample and test management, based around structured data; the ELN handles the unstructured and discipline-specific data. But the ELN market became a bit fuzzy with a small number of products (QA-ELNs) that were labelled as ELNs, but functionally were closer to a LIMS, albeit with a different type of workflow. The products were essentially built around an SOP-driven workflow that presented the user with the test procedure. Test results could then be added to the appropriate fields in the procedure, either manually, or by a direct instrument interface. Of course, a more typical ELN could be configured with templates that are able to replicate this type of workflow, so one of the impacts of the specialised QA-ELNs was to cause the mainstream ELN vendors to respond with this type of functionality. Having kept very much in the background, suddenly the LIMS vendors, saw the opportunity to extend their products to embrace the QA-style workflow by adding a layer of functionality to provide either a procedural driven approach, or to accommodate the unstructured data that is associated with an experiment.

The outcome then is, if you are looking for a QA-ELN, there are three options; firstly to go with a specialised ELN dedicated to QA, secondly choose a mainstream ELN that offers a QA module, or thirdly choose a LIMS with ELN functionality. There’s no easy answer to this since your organisation’s specific requirements and existing infrastructure will have a big influence, but…..

If you do not already have a LIMS or an ELN, and compliance is a big issue for you, you will probably want to look at the specialised QA-ELNs. If you need to accommodate multiple disciplines in your ELN (chemistry, biology, QA, etc) then the mainstream vendors that offer a product with discipline-specific modules may be your first port of call. And if you already are a customer of a LIMS vendor who is now offering an ELN extension, then their systems may be the first to check out.

But perhaps the real issue here is our application-centric view of laboratory systems. The move by ELN vendors and LIMS vendors to offer a suite of functionality that operates on a single platform makes good sense. And if the platform were not proprietary, then it would make even better sense.