When science meets technology
From the early development of enterprise-wide ELNs, to the current
need for integration and data interchange standards, John Trigg discusses the changing face of informatics
During the time I was heading a European Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) project for Kodak, LIMS products had many limitations. We implemented ours across three sites – two in the UK and one in France – and discovered that it lacked effective means for dealing with unstructured data, non-routine and problem-solving requirements. There was a defi nite feeling that it performed well when managing basic analytical and routine processes, but fell short when getting used for R&D activity. Our solution was to evolve our own
Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) to complement the LIMS. The project began life as no more than corridor conversations discussing what was wrong with the LIMS. We put a number of requirements together and were able to piggyback the project on a big corporate initiative that was attempting to address an array of potential improvements in R&D effi ciency. Unfortunately, the major initiative failed to deliver all of its objectives. The ELN project was one of the few to succeed. Developed on our UK site, it gradually received buy-in from our American parent company to eventually become an enterprise-wide system – reportedly, one of the fi rst of its kind. Looking at today’s laboratory computing environment, there
seem to be two major issues. Over time, the lab has become an eco- system where science, technology and business processes merge, and all these elements are coming together to the point where being a scientist often isn’t enough. Individuals now need an aptitude for technology, combined with the ability to take all the process issues surrounding what happens in the laboratory environment into account. When gaining scientifi c qualifi cations, the emphasis is, quite correctly, placed on science, but when stepping into industry scientists are suddenly faced with additional considerations. Science intimately embraces technology,
and one challenge is that those using the output from lab systems may not be terribly well served in terms of sources of information, education and training relating to those systems. There is perhaps a need here to address this issue, but whether this can be done in a formal education system or not is another matter. Laboratory workers do
www.scientific-computing.com
need to be fully brought up to speed on the implications of the technology and processes associated with modern labs. Many aspects of science simply wouldn’t
exist without technology and while science itself is stunning, the impact that technology has in turning manual techniques into something that happens automatically and rapidly not only drives science forward, but puts additional demands on scientists to understand and get the best out of that technology. The other issue facing laboratory
computing is ‘integration’. One of the consequences of the introduction of an ELN is that it can remove all but transient traces of paper from a lab. Basically, it is helping create an ‘electronic lab’. But is an electronic
lab an ‘integrated’ lab? The latter is what most people aspire to, as a seamless environment in which data and information, generated from a number of sources, can be moved to where it is needed without any custom code being written and without it requiring to be converted from one format to another. However, the reality is that we have an application-centric approach that usually requires custom solutions to transfer data from one system to another. The need for integration and data interchange standards is
Curriculum Vitae
1980s GC team leader, Kodak Analytical Labs 1992 Technical leader, Kodak European LIMS programme 1996 Kodak ELN team 2000 Recipient, International LIMS Award 2000 Director, LIMS Institute 2005 Founder, phaseFour Informatics Limited 2005 Chairman, Automation & Analytical Management Group, The Royal Society of Chemistry 2009 Founder,
www.the
integratedlab.com 2010 Advisory board member, Institute of Laboratory Automation
obvious, and there have been initiatives in the past that have attempted to address this, but have failed to achieve any signifi cant and lasting impact. Laboratories lack a single unifying driver to move this requirement forward, unlike clinical laboratories that do have data interchange standards to facilitate the transfer of clinical data to health records. Collectively we have never challenged the instrument and software vendors to address this issue for us in the laboratory world. To some extent, technology is starting
to provide the rudiments of a de facto solution though the adoption of XML data fi les and browser-based interfaces to laboratory systems. The Pistoia Alliance is a recent initiative attempting to drive this requirement further, but there is still a very long way to go, and it will require an almost unprecedented level of grass-roots collaboration before we can talk in terms of ‘plug and play’ laboratory systems.
FEBRUARY/MARCH 2011 13
interview
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