 E-mail
for more information
Company's
other products
E-mail
to a colleague
See
similar products
Printer
friendly format
|
|
From the Tangible to the Intangible
The Science of Laboratory Information Management
by Phil Kilby, Waters Corp.
“Information science”
or “informatics,” in its simplest form, is the science of information. It is often studied as a branch of computer science and information technology, and is related to database, ontology and software engineering. Informatics is primarily
concerned with creating and structuring data; managing, storing and retrieving data; and distributing and transferring information.
By transforming information by computation or communication—whether by machines or by people—informatics focuses on understanding business or scientific research challenges and applying information technology to tackle them.
Figure 1. The informatics pinwheel.
Click to enlarge. |
More specifically, laboratory informatics is the specialized application of information technology to maximize laboratory operations. This encompasses data acquisition, data processing, data analysis and long-term archiving, laboratory information management, laboratory automation, scientific data management, and document authorship, review and approval
Bioinformatics and cheminformatics are terms that describe the management of specific kinds of information related to biology or aspects of drug discovery and development, sometimes referred to as vertical information domains. On the other hand, laboratory informatics touches all information domains from discovery to production. Therefore, it manages information in a horizontal domain.
Horizontal Informatics
A horizontal informatics approach brings many
benefits to an organization because it addresses broad issues such as compliance, data archiving, collaboration and sharing information, and capturing knowledge. Because horizontal applications are generic by nature, laboratory informatics solutions can be implemented in a lab, in a department or throughout an enterprise, as well as in the vertical domains of bioinformatics, cheminformatics or other scientific environments.
Knowledge Management
To derive the most value from a company’s intellectual assets, knowledge must be shared among a company’s strategic decision makers, thought leaders, scientists and other research team members, serving as the foundation for collaboration. What constitutes intellectual- or knowledge-based assets? There are two categories: explicit (tangible) and tacit (intangible). All laboratories share a basic need to capture both explicit and tacit knowledge. Examples of explicit knowledge include patents, raw data, reports, results, pictures, drawings, publications and ideas. This type of knowledge consists of anything that can be documented, archived and codified.
On the contrary, tacit knowledge—or know-how—is contained within people’s minds. The challenge inherent with tacit knowledge is figuring out how to recognize, generate, share and manage it. Even simply identifying tacit knowledge is a major hurdle for most organizations.
Explicit Knowledge
Capturing explicit knowledge is not an easy task. Integrating all data sources in a lab—from desktop computers to LC and GC instrumentation to mass spectrometer detectors—is difficult and expensive because interfaces need to be created between data sources and data consumers, those who want to use that captured information.
These data aren’t a corporate asset unless and until it is automatically imported into a centralized data warehouse. Making the data searchable and capable of being communicated and shared among scientists and collaborative team members delivers measurable gains in time-to-market and employee efficiency, all the while reducing cost and risk.
With available products like the Waters NuGenesis SDMS platform, a lab can capture the actual content of the reports (not just an image) and place the data into an Oracle relational database, storing all pertinent metadata at the time of data insertion for subsequent searches. The content is text searchable and vector scalable and, as such, can be mined and parsed into any other software application, such as statistics and visualization programs.
Just as importantly, all content is indexed, securely stored and made available to authorized users according to the appropriate data archival policies for your organization and IT infrastructure.
Tacit Knowledge
Tacit, implicit knowledge is that which is kept in paper-based notebooks. Most companies still use them to record work and store intellectual property (IP) that could later be the basis for patents. These notebooks typically contain administrative data (title/subject, investigator, date, signature); a short statement of purpose; protocol, such as assumptions and equations, methods, materials, suppliers, instruments and equipment; data, observations and results; interpretations and conclusions; and future directions and suggestions.
Today, many laboratories are capturing this information digitally. A product
like Waters SDMS Vision Publisher software can electronically capture, process and record all of these data types. The software tools available for the electronic capture of tacit knowledge adapt to existing workflows to increase productivity. The software now includes messaging and project management tools, document review features and a sophisticated search engine. Chemical structures and reactions; analytical data such as spectra, chromatograms and parameters; biological data, text, authored reports and comments; spreadsheets and tables; images and drawings; and scans, movies and
multimedia files is all information that can be managed in this way.
So is laboratory informatics just about capturing information? Of course not! Laboratory informatics is more than just capturing tangible data. It’s about building a catalogue of that data, so all information can be searched and repurposed and serve as a foundation for new knowledge, no matter where you
or your networked colleagues work. The end result is effective, strategic knowledge management.
For more information,
contact Phil Kilby, senior
marketing manager, Informatics, Waters Corp.,
at phil_kilby@waters.com or by phone at 508-482-2589.
AT A GLANCE
• By transforming information by computation or communication, informatics focuses on understanding business or scientific research challenges and applying information technology to tackle them
• Bioinformatics and cheminformatics are terms that describe the management of specific kinds of information related to biology or aspects of drug
discovery and development
• Knowledge must be shared among a company’s strategic decision makers, thought leaders, scientists and other research team members
• The software tools available for the electronic capture of tacit knowledge adapt to existing workflows to increase productivity
ONLINE
For additional information on the concepts discussed in this article, see Laboratory Equipment magazine at www.LaboratoryEquipment.com or the following Web site:
• www.waters.com
Waters Corporation
34 Maple Street
Milford, MA, 01757
|
