CONTENTS | LABORATORY INFORMATICS GUIDE 2015


WELCOME CHANGE MANAGEMENT


Peter Boogaard considers how enterprises should manage the changes that technology is bringing, to increase the value of the laboratory to the enterprise


INTEGRATION IMPLEMENTATION


Rebecca Pool talks to laboratory managers on how they implemented new informatics systems and the benefit that they brought


THE CLOUD


Flexibility and scalability are the hallmark of cloud solutions. Robert Roe investigates


PRODUCT ROUND-UP


Tom Wilkie presents a selection of the informatics products currently on the market


SUPPLIERS 28 A comprehensive listing of suppliers, consultants and integrators 24 20 8


Integrating informatics into industrial processes improves quality and flexibility, as Tom Wilkie discovers


14 4


Last year, I wrote that change tends to be slow in the disciplines that this Laboratory Informatics Guide serves, and that change has to be carefully orchestrated. Appropriately, therefore, the first article in this year’s Guide, by Peter Boogaard on page 4, is firmly focused on the topic of how to manage change. At all times, he writes, the aim must be to improve the value of the analytical laboratory to the organisation within which it sits and to improve the value of the data that the laboratory produces, so that it can be seen to be integral to the overall functions of the organisation. Boogaard’s article therefore nicely outlines the main


theme of this year’s edition – integration -- which entails both change and consolidation. If the laboratory is to be cost effective, then it needs to integrate all its internal operations – so that time-consuming and error-prone manual steps (especially the manual transcription of data) can be kept to a minimum. But there is a need for integration of the laboratory’s output with the manufacturing process itself. Both these themes are explored in the article on page 8. Examples of how informatics is being implemented in practice, and how that process of integration can help organisations both large and small, are to be found in Rebecca Pool’s article on page 14. One of the barriers to change has been the perception


that informatics systems are large and therefore expensive and that they need customising. As Robert Roe discusses on page 20, the advent of cloud technologies and the concept of software as a service are gradually changing this view and opening up integrated laboratory informatics to many more companies. So progress is being made, albeit at a slower pace than


many of us might hope. But then, who said that managing change would be easy?


Tom Wilkie Editor-in-chief


EDITORIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE TEAM Editor-in-chief: Tom Wilkie (editor.scw@europascience.com) Feature Writers: Robert Roe, Peter Boogaard, Rebecca Pool Production editor: Tim Gillett Circulation/readership enquiries: Pete Vine (subs@europascience.com)


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CORPORATE TEAM Publishing Director: Warren Clark Chairman and Publisher: Dr Tom Wilkie Web: www.scientific-computing.com


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