AddEd bEnEfiTs of ELns
When it comes to Electronic Laboratory Notebooks, John Trigg explores who stands to gain most
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t’s about 10 years since Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) started to get some serious attention as a potential replacement for the traditional bound
paper lab notebook. Over that period of time, a good proportion of large companies, particularly in the pharma industry, have made the transition, initially with some degree of caution, but now with growing momentum. Nevertheless, the overall market penetration for ELNs is still relatively low and there remain a number of non-pharma and smaller companies weighing their options about the paper to electronic transition. To some extent, this may be a consequence of harsh economic times where the resource requirements to undertake an ELN deployment may be somewhat limited. However the positive experiences being reported by those organisations that have made the transition would suggest that for anybody still considering an ELN, the question is ‘when’, not ‘if’. There has been a steady analogue to
digital conversion underway for laboratory data and information management processes over the past few decades. The majority of laboratory data acquisition, data processing and data management is now handled electronically. The replacement of the paper lab notebook is, for most labs, the last step in that process and, as with other industry sectors and processes that have undergone equivalent transitions
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from analogue to digital, there’s no going back. The benefits of being digital bring unprecedented value in terms of speed of communication, access to data and information, sharing and collaborating across departments, sites, regions and continents. For most labs, however, it is the short-
term benefits that justify the migration to digital. Potential improvements in laboratory productivity and efficiency will have the greatest sway in assigning finance to a project, and the return on investment will be a key success criterion. However, there are likely to be significant long-term benefits that are somewhat more difficult to quantify. A well-implemented ELN will become a major knowledge repository that can satisfy the corporate dilemma
experiments), elimination of paper- based tasks (cutting, pasting, filing, etc.), connecting and collaborating with workers with prior knowledge in other company locations, and generally benefiting from having access to ‘what’s been done before’. Overall, the transition to an ELN stands
to benefit the business as a whole, although we typically hear more from the scientists about the specific nature of those benefits. But what about the lawyers? After all, it is they that have often had a big say in the decision whether to make the transition. In the traditional context, the laboratory
notebook has a dual purpose; as a scientific record and as a business record, and the potential scientific benefits of an ELN are somewhat easier to justify. As a business record, however, there are a number of
‘in oThEr words, ThE AdmissAbiLiTy of pApEr And ELEcTronic rEcords ArE ThErEforE EqUivALEnT’
of ‘knowing what we know’. The view that ‘a couple of days in the lab can save a couple of hours in the library’ is likely to be cast to history when laboratory scientists have rapid desktop access to a searchable repository of all of the organisation’s records of experimentation. Those companies that have already made the transition are experiencing many benefits, thanks to the avoidance of rework (repeating
conditions that need to be taken into consideration with the transition from paper to electronic. These include system validation (in the GxP environment), IP (security, access control), long-term integrity, authenticity and preservation of electronic records, and legal/patent considerations. Of these, it is the patent issue in research laboratories that has raised most concern and, on occasions, proved to
Using E Lns
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