laboratory informatics ➤
directly affect business decisions.’ To this end, BioDiagnostics has implemented a web-based platform that allows the client to submit its testing requests online, generate labels for sample submission, and even plan a whole season’s testing programme and upload it into the BioDiagostics system in advance. ‘We provide an organisational tool to help clients negotiate what can be a very complicated testing environment,’ Tiede notes. ‘Te system is designed to provide guidance on the types of testing that the client may require for its products, along with the information that they need to provide to accompany the samples. Te client can upload and complete a spreadsheet and then send this directly to our database prior to the samples arriving at our laboratory for testing.’
Results in real time Two of the major informatics challenges for BioDiagnostics revolve around the ability to provide its clients with the ability to track the progress of a testing programme in real time, and to upload test results directly from the platform. ‘At present we can give our clients an estimated time for test completion, but what they really want is the ability to see the progress of their testing programme and the results, directly,’ Tiede says. ‘We are in the process of building this capability into our LIMS infrastructure, so that clients can also access their test reports online, and have the results data available for export into other formats, such as Excel, rather than rely on the data being sent by email or in the mail in hard copy format. Tis facility would
THE ADVANTAGE OF CENTRALISING OR FEDERATING DISPARATE DATA IS THAT IT CAN BE ANALYSED AND CORRELATED
also mean that clients should no longer have to store their reports internally, and will allow them to access historical data directly on our system. Ultimately, we aim to have a platform in place that will allow customers to track their testing online, see the analytical data as well as the reports that we generate, and access their information from mobile devices. It’s a move that will increase efficiency both for us as the service provider, and for the client, who will be able to more seamlessly request their tests, access and make decisions on the results, and provide data requested by the regulator.’
14 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD
Informatics systems have to cope with particular challenges in the field of agriculture
Centralising disparate data Te primary advantage of centralising or federating disparate data is that data can be analysed and correlated to extract key indicators that will enable researchers to make holistic decisions, notes Alister Campbell, head of application science at Dotmatics. Te UK-based firm works primarily with
the R&D side of the agricultural sciences sector, including chemistry, formulation and scale-up, as well as with managers and executive teams who use the platform to monitor the progress of R&D programmes and make projections. ‘As we see it, the main bottlenecks of
traditional agrochemical companies include a lack of consistency in data recording, which hinders the possibility of finding correlation or trends, along with poor information-sharing across silos, and the extent of time and manpower it takes to query data and reporting when results are sourced from multiple experiments or projects,’ Campbell explains. ‘Streamlining communication is key
to the success of modern research in agrochemicals. Many large companies in this sector have implemented informatics systems that cover their research processes, but many organisations of all sizes still rely heavily on pen and paper for recording data.’
Supporting the paperless lab Te Dotmatics Platform is a comprehensive web-based system that includes the Studies Notebook ELN, which offers end-to-end functionality for storing, querying and analysing R&D data. Central to the platform is Browser, which
is a configurable web-based system to query, report and collaborate. Tis can be integrated with Vortex, an intuitive and versatile data visualisation and analysis solution that can act as an alternative to spreadsheets. It provides the plots and functionality required to explore and understand any complexity and size of data. One of the pivotal tools related to implementing a paperless environment is Cascade, which manages laboratory tasks and enables the tracking the progression of samples through their complete life cycle, from work request to testing and processing results. ‘Organisations are now realising that having
a comprehensive informatics platform that enables laboratory personnel to work in a paperless fashion is no longer an option, but a must,’ Campbell stresses. ‘Most agrochemical companies share a common desire to become smarter by implementing laboratory environments that are completely digitalised. Te focus is on the ability to query, analyse, report, and extract new knowledge from diverse experiments as well as data from multiple projects.’
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