Use of ELN – Towards a Paperless Laboratory
Data recording is the lifeblood of any laboratory, whether it be an analytical lab, a research lab or a quality control and assurance lab. Whereas most labs earlier used a paper journal for recording test results and other data, they migrated to an electronic form and Excel-based sheets became popular. But as labs started becoming more sophisticated, their reporting requirements became more complicated and Excel-based sheets started becoming obsolete.
An ELN, or electronic laboratory notebook, is a next-gen lab record system that is far superior to paper journals and even Excel-based methods. They rely on form-based data capture and although were primarily used by discovery research labs, they have proved their agility and worth and have become essential tools in all R&D and quality control labs across a variety of industries.
ELNs help labs move towards a paperless environment and also help them meet compliance requirements like GLP, etc. Technological advancements have made modern ELNs more adaptable to the modern lab environment. They easily interface with instruments and make data capture and result publishing easy.
An ideal ELN should be fully user-configurable. It should be able to interface and handle both PC-based and non PC-based instruments. It should support core instruments like titrators, balances, spectroscopy, HPLC, GC and other hyphenated techniques. This is an essential capability of modern ELNs which makes work easy.
The user interface of an ELN is generally based on the now-popular Excel interface and it should also allow for designing customized templates. The end user should also be able to design templates according to the project at hand.
The modern ELN should also feature configurable integration engine that can send/receive data to/from any external database like LIMS or ERP. Parsed data should be automatically placed within ELN sheets.
The ELN software in modern ELNs is agile enough to allow capture of test data and any non-structured data within pre-defined templates. It should also be used for test work sheet, batch manufacturing record and any experiment recording. Modern ELN systems allow for file attachments with data sheets. A virtual PDF printer can automatically populate ELNs and can convert the data to PDF format.
Analytical development labs, R&D labs and QC labs can now use ELNs to move to a paperless environment. With the help of an ELN software provider, the labs can move towards electronic test method execution.
