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.

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

The course presented at SmartLabs Exchange outlined a systemic approach to automation, tracing its evolution from the days when quantitative chromatography was based on cutting out peaks and weighing them, to current requirements for integrating disparate laboratory instruments, systems and robotics into a unified laboratory ‘solution’. Considerable emphasis was placed on process and workflow understanding, the choice of technology infrastructure and the role that systems such as LIMS and ELNs can play in facilitating integration. From a manager’s perspective, the introduction of laboratory automation is equivalent to introducing a small scale ‘scientific manufacturing’ operation and therefore warrants appropriate policies and practices. Good planning plays a critical role in the deployment of laboratory automation, based on well-defined goals and business justification.

The course provided an excellent overview of strategic approach to laboratory automation. Full details of the public course schedule offered by the Institute for Laboratory Automation can be found here.

Next week the focus falls on the IQPC Smart Labs Exchange meeting in Brussels.  Smart Labs offers a different approach to the more conventional conference format with an emphasis on interactive workshops and a limited number of plenary sessions.  In addition, the organisers offer pre-arranged meetings between delegates and vendors.  It’s a format that has worked well in the past, so it will be interesting to see whether it continues to succeed.

However, in the background, there still remains a question about how the laboratory informatics market collaborates.  The conferences do represent an opportunity for users, vendors and consultants to get together now and again, and chew over the various issues and developments in the industry.  If the ELN conferences go away, as well they might, these opportunities will go with them, unless, of course, we can find another means of getting interested parties together.

We’ve seen this pattern before with the International LIMS Conferences, and interestingly there still seems to be plenty to discuss about LIMS.  The ELN market is still some way from being considered mature, and when it comes to laboratory integration, we’ve hardly started!  So where do we go?  Is the conference problem one of cost (money or time)?  That’s not an unreasonable assumption.  Or is the problem content or format?  Should we persuade the conference organisers to shift the content from being application-centric and concentrate on integration issues instead?  Is it a format problem?  Would changing the format to a more interactive approach such as workshop and discussion sessions improve matters?  These seem feasible approaches, but would they just retain the same high cost formula and run the risk of low attendance?  Or is there another way, by establishing a neutral, low cost forum where people who care about the industry and have something to say, can get together from time to time?  Now there’s something to talk about in the networking opportunities in Brussels.

The graduates of this school talk enough about it and seem so tightly-linked with it, that I have finally become curious-enough to learn more about it. I figured I would share the information with all of you, at the same time. To learn more about the school, I spoke with Patrick Girard, who has been the school’s Director for ten years, and Claude Goldszmidt, GPHY Professor and Senior Consultant at Capgemini.

The GPHY School was founded in 1971. Although it was initially more geared toward engineering, it was always intended to provide a multidisciplinary curriculum, combining courses such as biology and computer science. The graduates are formed more as computer scientists, but with a strong scientific background so that they will specifically understand the issues of scientific software. The school was initially focused mainly on pharmaceuticals, biotechs and biopharms, but in 2000, it diversified to service an increased variety of other industries that are biology and health related.

90% of the students that come to GPHY have a background in Biology. The school’s success in placing their graduates comes partly from their hands-on approach to learning the discipline. Students are trained in real-life systems using professional methods, and are required to mix internships with companies along with their coursework. The students are required to spend three months of each year of study in internships for their first two years, and six months of internships for their third year of study.

Additionally, the school maintains a strong relationship both with the end-user companies, as well as the scientific software companies. In fact, many instructors are experts from the industry, who share their knowledge and first-hand expertise with these students. The school maintains links with over 500 French companies, and links with companies from other countries, as well.

Students are increasingly hired by both these categories of companies, as the school maintains ongoing relationships with these companies in order to understand what job skills are needed. Thus, the school maintains that their students, upon graduation, will have a shorter ramp-up time than students who did not receive this type of multi-disciplinary and work-study-type of training. It is the school’s goal to provide as much real-world experience and knowledge as possible to prepare their students to excel in their real-world positions.

Thank you to both Patrick and Claude for the time they gave to me to help me put this information together to share with all of you who read TheIntegratedLab.com.

* GPHY means: Genie Physiologics Informatics.

As the ELN market has developed, an ever increasing number of laboratories can rightly claim to be ‘electronic’; the introduction of an ELN generally eliminates paper from any transactional and archival role in the laboratory. But being ‘electronic’ is not the same as being ‘integrated’, since most of our labs contain a collection of systems that were not necessarily designed to work together in a truly integrated way. Yet we all harbour a vision of an integrated environment that enables us to easily interconnect instruments and systems and provide seamless access to data and information to support the scientific and business requirements of our organisations.

Sadly, we are a long way from achieving this vision, and this is a concern that has been repeatedly expressed for years. Moving towards an ‘open’ approach in terms of platforms, applications and data standards in order to realise this vision requires a driving force and a community effort. Over the years there have been several worthy attempts to address some aspects of these issues, mainly concerning data interchange standards, but the reality is that little has been achieved. As a community, we have never gained sufficient collective visibility or inertia to challenge the vendors over proprietary solutions. In the parallel universe of the clinical laboratory, there is some positive movement towards integration, driven by a common cause: medical records. Although there is still a long way to go to get through the technical and political quagmire in order to achieve harmony, usable standards are emerging. The general laboratory world doesn’t have the same sort of ‘third-party’ driving force to demand compliance across the industry. We might speculate that a regulatory agency could have the capability of driving change, but right now that doesn’t seem to be high on the priority list.

So if we, as an unorganised community, don’t have the inertia, and we can’t depend on a 3rd party to solve the problem for us, can we turn to technology for help? Over the past few years, and almost exclusively associated with Web 2.0, the technology trend has been towards providing tools for collaboration and integration. Hence my question about integration in the light of the growing trend towards SaaS application offerings, and whether we in the laboratory world can benefit from this much wider trend.

So how does this link to the other question about conferences? If you read the thread you will see that there is a growing concern about the viability of relatively expensive conferences, both from a vendor and delegate viewpoint, once the subject matter has progressed through the hype cycle. In other words, once the subject has become mainstream, most of the questions have been answered, and the on-going requirement is mainly about education rather than debate. This appears now to be the case for ELNs; the same thing happened with LIMS some years ago. But I contend that the next issue is Laboratory Integration. It is a time for debate and action, but is a ‘conference’ the right debating chamber? It seems to me that an independent and open forum that represents the interests of users and open-minded vendors, would be a far more suitable mechanism for making progress. It appears to be a paradox that at a time when communication and collaboration have reached unprecedented levels, that we have not taken full advantage of this capability to work together as a community to achieve a win-win.

The programme served to highlight the difference between the perspective of business success and user acceptance. Its difficult to argue against the fact that RyanAir are a successful business, but at what cost?

So when it comes to informatics projects, how do we measure success? There are three phases in an implementation that may have different measures. In the short term, completing the implementation on time, on budget and in full (all deliverables) represents the conclusion of a successful project. In the mid term, the return on investment becomes a success criterion; how soon can we claim that the upfront costs have been recovered through some form of increased productivity. But in the long term, the metrics become more fuzzy. Most informatics projects will have a knowledge management component that targets sharing, collaboration and IP protection that lead to some discernible improvement in the way the business operates. These three phases roughly align to the three basic criteria of cost, time and quality, the emphasis in the first phase being on time and project costs, in the second phase on ROI (costs) and in the third phase on quality. So in the Ryanair example, the difference of opinion centres around ‘quality’, a discussion that seems sadly out of date since ‘fit for purpose’ is a modern acceptable catch-all definition for quality, and that having the latest and greatest doesn’t automatically correspond to a quality solution.

This argument tends to reinforce the fact that user acceptance is the most critical long term success factor for any informatics project, and as a consequence, identifies where a lot of effort needs to be made in project planning. This means keeping careful control of user requirements, keeping users involved throughout implementation, and recognising and supporting the full spectrum of users.

This was the basis of a presentation I gave at the 5th Forum on Laboratory Informatics, San Francisco, Oct 26-28th. The presentation is available here.

As has been said in other posts on The Integrated Lab, the added value that conferences offer is the informal, face-to-face networking opportunities of meeting other attendees, and sharing ideas and experiences. I’m looking forward to catching up with any current followers of The Integrated Lab at these conferences, and hopefully convincing others to come and join us.

He and I agreed that the terms are fairly meaningless, right now – that our industry needs to either redefine the terms to reflect the new products or to abandon them, entirely.

With this being a time when many labs are getting ready to start their Fall work, and a new round of product selections, we hear many people complain that this is just too confusing.

Here’s my usual tip, and these are the same tips I give all of those who want to do this, themselves, regardless whether we’ve been in such transition or not:

1. Don’t get hung-up on the terms. They don’t mean much.
2. Focus on functionality.
3. Plan to spend lots of time on this. By the time you’re done, you’ll be an expert, too.

My own opinion on this is that our current terms reflect old ways of doing business that we’re replacing. As we’re making our transition away from old processes, let’s stop using terms that reflect those old processes to define our new path.

This seems like a digression from the main topic, but it’s just a way to lead you to it. The simple answer is this: this is time-consuming and hard. Period. Read lots of articles to get yourself started and spend a lot of time on it.   –or-  Hire someone to do it.

Hey, I said “simple” not “easy”!

Update: Some of you have had problems viewing the file.  With the author’s permission, I am posting a PDF version of the article.