INFORMATICS IN ACTION
What better view of informatics solutions than from the people who use them? Five industry professionals share their experiences
Antje Bogedaly, project lead, Laboratory Software, at the Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT)
T
he Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT), as a joint project of Charité
Universitaetsmedizin Berlin and Helmholtz- Zentrum Geesthacht (HZG), is one of the leading academic translational centres for Advanced Therapy Medicinal Product (ATMP) development. As such, we have to pay close attention to our data management throughout the research process and the translation of the outcomes into medicinal products and therapies. In this context, my role is to oversee how laboratory data is initially captured, stored, and archived; how the data flows are directed; and what data needs to be presented to researchers in the laboratory at the right stage of the development process. For the future, my main focus is to get away from paper-based documentation of the workflows and to the stage where our entire institution works within a purely electronic system. For the requirements of laboratory
information management, in terms of biobanking and documentation of the experiments conducted on the samples, the main challenge is that our labs contain many instruments with a high volume of data output. During the ATMP development process – which is where most of our research lies – we must be able to shift through the processed data and easily identify the most useful and critical
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elements within it. Therefore, we need the capabilities of a comprehensive information management system. In addition, we are subject to the highest requirements for regulatory compliance, which necessitates a strong focus on the validation of those computer-based systems. A further challenge is that, as with many labs, from the perspective of the scientist as a user our systems need to have an intuitive usability and should be easy to understand in a short amount of time. One key thing I would advise is that when
selecting an information management system, organisations should not need to face coding in order to upgrade it, as every single function added will need to be validated later on – this makes things incredibly difficult when you have a complex system under regulatory compliance in place. When choosing our system, we looked specifically for a flexible solution that would suit our users from different research areas, such as biology, chemistry and biochemistry and would be customisable without the need for coding, not only for slight adjustments, but also for difficult questions of configuration. In order to deploy an information
management system successfully, it is critical
information management system successfully,
understood right from the beginning of the process’
it is critical that data flows and workflows are conceptualised and
‘In order to deploy an
that data flows and workflows are conceptualised and understood right from the beginning – and being managed as a process. In the beginning, users may feel that the data input is consuming more of their time and effort and so may be resistant to leaving traditional lab notebooks behind. This is especially true if a system is overly complex. However, once they start to need data retrieval, they will discover that the long-term benefits far outweigh the short-term cost – and that’s when you get the user buy-in. It also helps if you deploy a system that is customisable in a way that means users only see what they need. Our solution is a combination
of a biobanking approach – a necessity given the strict regulations and 30 years of
archives that we have – and LabVantage LIMS. In the life of a researcher, biobanking is the beginning and the end of the workflow, whereas the lab information management is the process in between. This combination of both not only handles the document management aspects, but ensures we have a compliant process chain for our materials, technical instruments, equipment and suppliers.
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