Drugs r&d increases uptake of electronic lab notebooks

The European electronic lab notebooks (ELN) market is changing rapidly as the technology continues to develop.

ELNs provide a sophisticated communications platform that enables researchers to share experiment-related information seamlessly, and even improve or reuse the data. It also satisfies multiple intellectual property and regulatory requirements, allowing significant reductions in cycle times in biopharmaceutical r&d.

New analysis from consultancy Frost & Sullivan reveals that the European ELN market earned revenues of US$32.3m in 2006 and forecasts this figure to reach $143.1m in 2013.

"Frost & Sullivan expects to see continued and rapid growth," notes Frost & Sullivan programme leader of drug discovery Dr Amarpreet Dhiman. One of the key advances in ELN technology has been the ability to cater to niche end users with specific solutions that include features such as authentication, sign/witness, audit, notebook record repository and reporting services with extensive workflow customisation capabilities."

However, many organisations are concerned about ELN affecting their processes and ways of working and this has impacted ELN adoption.

"Before ELNs can be adopted by companies as the principal method of recording lab data, they must meet the reliability, authenticity and corroboration criteria established for paper laboratory notebooks," said Dr Dhiman.

Security is a particularly important aspect of the ELN database, especially when entering and updating data in the ELN platform. The challenge is to maintain an audit trail during such updates and to provide suitable IT administration features to ensure effective and secure running of the system.

ELNs also need to have a high degree of flexibility that allows scientists from different disciplines to continue working in ways that best suit their needs. They need to be sufficiently structured to enable an ordered and managed approach to record-keeping and must also offer advanced search capabilities.

"Scientific requirements need to be appropriately articulated so that ELNs satisfy and accommodate the needs of all labs while simultaneously working more efficiently and effectively,. concluded Dr Dhiman.