eLN


SUPPLEMENT IMPLEMENTATION OF AN


ELECTRONIC LAB NOTEBOOK SYSTEM AT VIB


Alexander Botzki eLN Project Officer, VIB


Life sciences laboratories generate an increasing amount of digital information. Storing this information distributed in file folders or in paper notebooks is not a viable solution if an organisation wants to be able to efficiently capture and search through its intellectual property.


VIB therefore decided to invest in an electronic laboratory notebook (eLN) solution and selected – after a successful pilot study – CambridgeSoft’s E-Notebook for institute-wide deployment to over 800 VIB researchers. It provides researchers with an electronic laboratory management system using a centrally managed enterprise application. Scientists and technicians use the E-Notebook to capture all of the data from laboratory experiments including MS Office documents, chemical and biological structures and images as well as analytical instrument output. E-Notebook data is securely stored and archived within an Oracle database infrastructure, which facilitates 21CFR part 11 compliance and provides intellectual property protection. The eLN is currently being rolled out in


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European Pharmaceutical Review Volume 16 | Issue 4 | 2011


several phases to VIB scientists active in many life sciences research domains and disciplines (genomics, plant biology, neurobiology, microbiology, etc) at four different universities in Flanders. By introducing the E-Notebook, VIB


introduction in five early adopter groups, the pilot phase of the eLN implementation was successfully completed”


“Three months after its


aims to gradually replace the use of paper laboratory notebooks while simultaneously providing each research group the flexibility to adapt the E-Notebook to their specific scientific needs.


“E-Notebook enables us to capture and


store our research data in one common system across the VIB community, facilitating higher data standardisation and data exchange among our scientists,” said Dr. Jo Bury, Managing Director of VIB. “Moreover, VIB scientists are able to search, compare and retrieve their digital data more easily. E-Notebook also increases efficiency as it reduces reporting time and avoids repetition of previously performed experiments.” VIB started to investigate the potential use


of electronic lab notebooks at the end of 2008. After a survey of the market, some candidate- software providers were invited to present their eLN solutions. It quickly became clear that most of the proposed software solutions were still rather chemistry-centred. Moreover, most of the current clients of the major eLN software providers were either big Pharma or biotech companies, whereas eLNs had been rolled out to only a very few life sciences institutes. Therefore,


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