ELN Integration: Avoiding the Spaghetti Bowl by Michael H. Elliott. (Scientific Computing, May 2011)
Michael writes:
…over 20 percent of the average scientist’s time is spend on non-value-added data aggregation, transcription, formatting and manual documentation. [p.19]
…in a recent survey of over 400 scientists, “integrating data from multiple systems” was cited as the number one laboratory data management challenge. [p. 19]
The multiple terminologies various groups use can also impact integration. For example, what a “lot” or “batch” can vary by who you ask: the medicinal chemist, formulator, or biologics process development scientist. A common vocabulary can be one of the biggest stumbling blocks, as it involves either gaining consensus, defining semantic relationships and/or data transformations. [p.21]
Good article that highlights the on-going difficulty that scientists face with ELN (Electronic Lab Notebook) solutions.
It was refreshing to hear someone mention organizational and operational issues being “…more difficult to address than writing code.”
Technical solutions cannot address personnel, organizational or semantic issues.
However tempting it may be to “wait and see,” the personnel, organizational and semantic issues you had before an integration solution will be there post-integration solution. That’s a promise.