Ten Top Tips for Investing in an Electronic Lab Notebook
Tip Sheet
In this tip sheet, we outline ten things you need to consider before investing in an electronic laboratory notebook.
Protect your data and IP
The IP that your researchers create is important for patent filing and regulatory submissions. Ensure that it is captured and stored in a robust manner that meets the requirements of 21 CFR (11).
Don’t waste time on hours of training
Researchers don’t have the time or patience to sit through hours of training. Encourage user adoption (and your project’s success) by selecting a system with modern interfaces that is simple and intuitive to use.
Keep it really simple
Don’t over complicate the solution – focus on tools that help the synthetic chemists and biologists execute their work effectively.
Don’t rely on scientists to have legacy knowledge
As your organization grows, legacy knowledge becomes harder to articulate. Having a system that can provide the user with feature-rich chemically enabled searching can help reduce the amount of repeated effort.
Encourage a culture of information sharing
An electronic knowledge management system allows the organization to reduce repeated effort. The knowledge gained from a failed experiment is as valuable as a successful experiment!
Don’t host or maintain the system yourself
Cloud solutions are industry standard nowadays, simplifying your IT infrastructure and overhead significantly. Choose a cloud provider that has excellent security and service levels.
Don’t try to automate everything
Small labs with a few users don’t need every system or piece of equipment to be connected. Consider which are the most frequently used, and where tedious transcription of data can be reduced.
Aspire to grow
Every organization has ambitions to expand and be successful. Choose a platform that can grow and adapt with your needs, whether it is within chemistry, biology, analytical, DMPK or formulations.
Use industry standard formats for everything
Using known standards from documents and images, down to the chemical indexing in the database, ensures that your data is stored in a well-recognized format, making it easier to migrate if you need to in future.
Ask about established partnerships
Researchers will want to user third-party applications, look up information from databases and register completed compounds. Having a seamless integration to other applications reduces the burden of transcribing information.
If you would like to find out more about ELNs, get in touch with our experts.
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