ANALYSIS ON THE GO O
Mobile phones and software as a service are becoming popular technologies in the laboratory, as Robert Roe discovers
One of the biggest trends in informatics is the move to integrate mobile technology into the
laboratory. The topic will feature repeatedly in presentations and round-table discussions at the Smartlab Exchange meeting in Munich in February 2014. Similarly, many laboratories are switching
to use software as a service (SaaS). The first reason is to restrict spending on data-centres and IT infrastructure especially for smaller companies that cannot afford to have large installations for data analysis. SaaS provides the opportunity to pay for these services when they become necessary, and removes the need to house data centres with large maintenance and power costs. The second reason for the adoption of an
SaaS model is so it can be used as a safe but temporary collaboration infrastructure – several companies can share a zone external to their firewall where collaboration can take place but without risking their intellectual property. This service can then be switched off once the collaboration is over, meaning that the companies do not incur extra costs
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or have to share parts of their own internal data-centres with competitors.
MOBILE TECHNOLOGY STRATEGY Mobile technology presents its own technical challenges. Either discrete applications have to be created to take advantage of mobile devices, or the existing system has to be modified, for example, to enable the use of touch-screen devices. Informatics companies have adopted different strategies for tackling the integration of mobile devices. Stuart Ward, product manager for IDBS’s ELN product E-WorkBook, said: ‘We see mobile devices as having specific apps for very discrete types of transactions, rather than some sort of universal application like you could deliver on a desktop or a laptop.’ In contrast, Seamus Mac Conaonaigh,
director of technology at Thermo Fisher, said: ‘Our approach is really to extend our applications to allow mobile use, rather than to develop single-use mobile applications.’ He went on to explain how the company’s software can enable the use of mobile-devices within the existing LIMS infrastructure. ‘We
have a piece of middleware called Integration Manager which allows integration of basically any end-point with our LIMS system’. This enables users to develop functionality, on top of the existing LIMS platform, tailored to their specific needs.
CAMERA TECHNOLOGY Mobile technologies can capture data better than conventional techniques in certain areas. The most effective and easiest to implement are: QR codes; bar-code scanning; and the use of cameras to photograph specific instances in the lab. Ward explains that very much like traditional ‘apps’, data-capture in the laboratory is most effective for very specific things: ‘Using the camera as a bar-code scanner or a taking a picture of an event. They lend themselves to specific types of data’. Mobile technology is not going to replace all the traditional methods of data capture. ‘You’re not going to have someone on a mobile device typing in 10,000 data- points, it’s just not going to work,’ he continued. One problem is simply the lack of
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