CONTENTS | LABORATORY INFORMATICS GUIDE 2014


WELCOME INTEGRATED LABORATORIES


Peter Boogaard reviews efforts to make the laboratory an integrated operation


DATA INTERCHANGE INFORMATICS IN ACTION


Sophia Ktori canvasses the views of some key users of informatics systems – from laboratories to multinationals


PRODUCT ROUND-UP


A selection of informatics products currently on the market, rounded up by Robert Roe


ANALYSIS ON THE GO SUPPLIERS


A comprehensive listing of suppliers, consultants and integrators


26


Robert Roe discovers how mobile phones and associated software are becoming increasingly important in laboratories


30 20 10


Standardisation is crucial in a world where sharing is increasingly commonplace, argues John Trigg


14 4


There is a paradox at the heart of this year’s Laboratory Informatics Guide. On the one hand, we have an article showing how technology developed for the consumer market can help drive down costs and improve efficiencies in the work of the analytical laboratory. But we also have an article lamenting how the sort of information sharing that consumers take for granted – think Flickr or Facebook – is currently impossible in laboratory informatics. For very good reasons, change tends to be slow in this


discipline. No one can play with electronic systems to see how to make them more efficient or cheaper – not if those systems have to conform to regulations issued by the US Food and Drug Administration and counterpart bodies in other countries. Change has to be carefully orchestrated. However, the pressure for change never goes away.


Analytical laboratories, whether in discovery or quality control, have to justify their cost and demonstrate to higher management that costs are being driven down. As Robert Roe’s article on page 26 demonstrates, sometimes


the change comes from technologies developed in entirely different spheres for entirely different purposes. Mobile phones and tablet computers, developed for the consumer market, are forcing informatics vendors to modify their systems to allow for the input, processing and analysis of data through these devices. Peter Boogaard reports on the progress being made towards


the integrated and paperless laboratory on page 4. However, the lack of common standards for interchanging laboratory data is an obstacle to the further development of informatics and progress has been frustratingly slow, as John Trigg discusses on page 10. So this year, the glass is half-full. Let us hope that by the


time next year’s Laboratory Informatics Guide is published, we can report that the cup is brimming over!


Tom Wilkie Editor-in-chief


EDITORIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE TEAM Editor: Beth Harlen (editor.scw@europascience.com) Feature Writers: Robert Roe, Peter Boogaard, John Trigg, Sophia Ktori Production editor: Tim Gillett Circulation/readership enquiries: Pete Vine (subs@europascience.com)


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