The Future for Electronic Lab Notebooks

Symyx Technologies, Inc has authored a new application note that discusses why many pharmaceutical, biotechnology, chemical and consumer product organisations are adopting a single, organisation-wide enterprise electronic notebook strategy.

It is widely accepted that the electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) is an essential tool in today’s dynamic scientific R&D landscape. Improving R&D efficiency means optimising the everyday tasks of scientists. ELNs allow scientists to focus on laboratory work rather than the documentation, while at the same time enabling them to share experimental results and learn from institutional knowledge and prior art.

The application note discusses why more and more organisations are demanding a single enterprise lab notebook that improves productivity, operational agility and the ability to do more for less. A single notebook deployed across the enterprise can be used across multiple scientific disciplines, as well as across the entire R&D spectrum - from early discovery to late-phase development, and onto early manufacturing. By centrally and consistently capturing information scientific informatics, the paper describes how an enterprise ELN can foster workflow optimisation, process consistency, collaboration, and improved productivity through knowledge sharing. The key importance for the enterprise ELN to support integration with wide ranging tools, workflows, laboratory apparatus, lab automation software, and data management systems is discussed.