STANDARDS | LABORATORY INFORMATICS GUIDE 2014
needed to display it. PDF/A is a version of the portable document format (PDF) developed specifically for archiving electronic documents. It differs from PDF by omitting features that are unsuitable for long-term archiving, such as font linking (as opposed to font embedding). It identifies a ‘profile’ for electronic documents to ensure that they can be reproduced in exactly the same way over years to come. Key to this reproducibility is the requirement for PDF/A documents to be 100 per cent self- contained. All the information necessary for displaying the document in the same manner every time is embedded in the file. The business case for data interchange
standards is quite clear, as companies focus on: productivity (cost reduction); outsourcing or externalisation; and innovation:
l Improved productivity is increasingly dependent on automation and the elimination of inefficient steps and manipulations in data handling. Standards for data interchange would simplify instrument interfaces, cut interfacing costs, reduce errors, and simplify validation;
l Outsourcing, or externalisation, involves communicating and sharing data across wide geographic areas and disparate technologies. Standards for data interchange can facilitate these communications by removing the dependence of the data on the application that created them. In other words, the data can be stored, viewed, and manipulated in applications other than the one in which it was created; and
l Innovation arises from correlating, mining, visualising, and making sense of data from multiple sources. Again, these processes can be easier and faster, if data can be stored and accessed in standard formats. A few standards for interchanging
laboratory data do exist, but they have not been adopted on an industry-wide scale. If the business case is so strong, why
is it taking so long to make any progress? From a technology perspective, there has never been a better time to exploit the potential of standards: the development of a global infrastructure in the form of the internet has provided a platform that other consumer and business domains are taking full advantage of, as the example of photo sharing illustrates. However, digitising the laboratory has been a slow journey,
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