Electronic lab notebooks: A faster, smarter lab

By John McCarthy

The latest generation of electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) is helping scientists turn the crank faster in today’s increasingly paperless – and rapidly converging – electronic laboratory environment.

“Today’s ELNs efficiently manage the flow of information, tasks and materials among scientists, software and instruments within and between labs.”
-John McCarthy

As pharmaceutical R&D labs complete more experiments supporting diverse product development pipelines, they are producing vast amounts of complex data and huge repositories of supporting information. To further complicate matters, pharmaceutical R&D encompasses a wide variety of scientific disciplines ranging from basic research through applied research to clinical studies. Sometimes scientists can walk down the hall and discuss their findings with colleagues over coffee. More often than not, however, collaborators are geographically far-flung, working in contract research organizations, partner companies, or academic labs in different time zones and countries.

These disparate groups all have their favorite techniques, instruments, and software. While many of these systems help to automate and accelerate laboratory throughput, they also tend to create silos of structured and unstructured information that impede collaboration and productivity.

Today’s next-generation ELNs are essential tools for efficiently managing the flow of information, tasks, and materials among scientists, software, and instruments within and between labs. ELNs are configurable for use by interdisciplinary project teams and ready to plug-and-play with supporting informatics systems and instrumentation. These adaptable systems support an electronic lab environment that is not merely paperless, but increasingly convergent, more collaborative, and information-driven.

Such an environment connects scientists with the techniques, instruments, and software they use every day to capture, analyze, and share information. It also improves information access and analysis, enabling scientists to ask the questions and get the answers they need to make better decisions. In addition, it helps to link the ‘supply chain’ of materials, samples and work requests into the ELN, streamlining experimentation across laboratories, departments, and external partners.

Two-way linking between the ELN and laboratory information management systems (LIMS) or chromatography data systems (CDS) enables scientists to capture the entire context of what they do in the lab – data and process together – all in a single place, which is then readily sharable with colleagues. Linking laboratory instruments such as balances with the ELN accelerates experimentation, as scientists are able to send sample mass or animal weight directly to the ELN. Likewise, technicians can now retrieve up-to-date calibration information and, if necessary, run daily balance checks without leaving their notebooks.

Linking the notebook with familiar software applications such as spreadsheets, statistical analysis packages, and kinetic modeling/data visualization tools drives further convergence, consistency, and efficiency in the lab. In addition, powerful information exploration and data mining tools are evolving to help scientists fully leverage structured and unstructured information captured by LIMS and ELNs.

Using these tools, scientists can filter, mine, and correlate data captured across multiple experiments by different labs, quickly analyzing chemical structures, chromatograms, spectra, and images in spreadsheets. With a single click, they can send their latest results to powerful data analytics programs and return summary analyses back into the notebook to drive better decisions or new approaches to a problem.

Routing tasks, samples, methods and results to colleagues directly from the notebook drives compliance and consistency, eliminates workflow bottlenecks, reduces cycle times and improves project team communication. The same supply chain techniques used to make manufacturing more efficient also speed the efficient hand-off of physical materials and tasks in the lab. This means process chemists, analytical chemists, formulators and PK groups can work together more efficiently, even when collaborating in ‘virtual’ teams that span geographical and business boundaries.

Today’s next-generation ELN is much more than just a tool for recording, reporting, and reusing experiments in a paperless world. By efficiently managing the flow of information and tasks among scientists, software, and instruments, the ELN is moving research organizations of all sizes to a more convergent, information-driven, and efficient electronic lab environment.

For further discussion, see Symyx’s online article on the convergent analytical lab at www.ngpharma.com.

For more information, visit www.symyx.com/notebook6 and www.symyx.com/hosted-informatics, or contact info@symyx.com.

---

Biography

John McCarthy is VP Product Management Strategy with Symyx Technologies, Inc. He has worked in life sciences research and informatics for 20 years. His areas of interest are capturing, managing, and integrating information within the discovery process with a focus on how this information can be transformed into knowledge by scientists in various disciplines and roles.