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Bridging the language divide


Sophia Ktori continues her profiles of informatics


companies by looking at how BSSN is pioneering data standardisation


T


ablets and smartphones have revolutionised the way in which we all work, and changed expectations of how everyone should be able to work.


Modern workers need to communicate and share information, from any location, and from any mobile platform. Making potentially sensitive analytical and other scientific data available to the right personnel, in real time and in a suitable format, is no different, conceptually, at least. Yet in an R&D or life-science testing environment, data is likely to comprise multiple layers of information, coming out of multiple instruments from multiple vendors, which may all use different native soſtware.


Interpreting data formats BSSN Soſtware recently launched its Seahorse Mobile Edition platform as a vendor-independent solution for delivering scientific data to mobile devices, supporting a wide range of analytical data types, from HPLC and mass spectrometry, to medical imaging, microplate readers and bioreactors.Te platform effectively sits alongside the data source – for example, a scientific data management system (SDMS), which provides an interface with existing data repositories, and interprets the data format. ‘In today’s world of mobile working, it is really important for people to be able to access their analytical data wherever they are, perhaps to see what analytical results have been generated overnight, while they are on the train to work in the morning’, commented Burkhard Schaefer, BSSN president and lead architect of the AnIML data standard on which BSSN’s Seahorse family of soſtware is built. ‘Users may want to flick through data from previous


12 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD


experiments to help decide on their next round of analyses, and they may not necessarily be in the laboratory or at a workstation when they need to be able to do this.’


Improving compatibility Seahorse Mobile Edition is the latest development in BSSN’s drive to provide soſtware that will get the right data, in usable and ultimately reusable formats, to the end users – the people who need to review and potentially make decisions based on that data. Te firm, based in Darmstadt, Germany, is also developing tools that will facilitate the integration of experimental and analytical results in formats that are compatible with other R&D platforms and systems, such as an electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) or laboratory information system (LIS), for example, Schaefer explains. ‘It’s very easy to focus on what the latest


state-of-the-art instrumentation and equipment is capable of, and then forget that we also need to be able to use and reuse the analytical data coming out of that instrumentation. A vast


IT IS IMPORTANT FOR PEOPLE TO ACCESS THEIR DATA WHEREVER THEY ARE


amount of data ends up in silos or locked in proprietary instrument soſtware. It can be difficult to mine, interrogate, or share across organisational boundaries, and a vast amount of the value of that data is then lost. In the same way, we need to make sure that we can integrate all this experimental and analytical data with information management and other soſtware systems.’


Making data integration smarter A key point here is to make data integration smarter, so that only relevant information is passed into other layers of informatics systems, Schaefer adds. To enable smarter data integration, BSSN has


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developed a mapping framework that makes it possible to fine-tune the flow of data from analytical instrumentation into data management and other informatics platforms. ‘For example, you will want to pass all your chromatogram and peak information into an ELN, but you may only need an analyte concentration measurement to be fed back into a LIMS, so that a decision can be made on whether to release a batch. Our mapping framework allows you to define those links and specify which packets of information need to go into any target data system.’ Tis need to optimise data accessibility,


usability, and integration has been built into BSSN’s development of its Seahorse family of soſtware solutions for capturing, viewing, and


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