ELNs in today’s world

The past year has been “eventful” to say the least. So many long-held truths have shattered in moments, taking with them institutions who were meant to be the model of probity and longevity. Only a fool could pretend that the business of modernising R&D by replacing Paper Lab Notebooks is unaffected by such massive events, and it is perhaps useful to peer into the mist and see what the future might hold. The Electronic Lab Notebook’s time has no doubt arrived, but perhaps we need to adjust our sights for the new environment.

Warren Buffet said “It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked” and perhaps the hidden blessing in reduced financial circumstances is a renewed focus on value. Successful projects will be more disciplined, surviving suppliers will be more customer-focused, and the products that succeed will be capable of delivering a predicable Return on Investment within a short time period.

It isn’t just a simple matter that there is less money around; for sure, companies which are exposed to the wider economic cycle are clearly hurting badly (the Chemicals industry is perhaps the most obvious); Venture-funded endeavours that planned to go back to the market for additional funding are having to close or sell out. Even for companies which are well-funded for a few years, the general climate of uncertainty is causing significant caution and search for value. Suppliers who had pumped themselves up on cheap speculative money, with the intention of selling large amounts of high-ticket software and associated consulting are being forced to make cutbacks as their sales pipes evaporate, and the resulting revenue loss reducing their ability to service the sometimes onerous commitments they have made to their existing customers.

Despite all this, the problem remains – Paper Lab Notebooks are no longer “fit for purpose” and an ELN can deliver well-documented savings in both time and effectiveness for any R&D-based organisation. The question is, how can we achieve this in a cautious, value-focused climate?

The answer goes right to the core of how we have been currently approaching the problem. Yes, you can tweak around the edges – most suppliers now have rental options which removes some of the financial pain (although the consulting effort required by many “fully functional” products is still onerous), and some have even started offering on-demand SaaS-style (Software as a Service) offerings. However, in an environment of such uncertainty much more needs to be done – how can you expect a management team to support an ELN project which will require 6 months of customisation before it even starts to deliver value, when no one is sure what the business will look like on that timescale or even if they will be in business? The answer goes right to the heart of our assumptions about how to approach the problem of replacing the Paper Notebook.

ELN 1.0
One of the problems that has confronted the “ELN” industry for a long time is the ambiguity of the term. Many a consultant and vendor has attempted to hijack “ELN” with their own favored definition, complete with impressive diagrams in outdated and expensive reports. ELN 2.0 needs to focus on delivering value, and that means laser-like focus on the customer’s problem – which starts out something along the lines of “Since we bought all these computers, this paper notebook doesn’t fit with the way we work”.

Some disciplines clearly benefit from a science-centric working environment which supports their niche requirements for example Medicinal Chemistry, and the considerable number of ELNs targeted at this sector is proof of the value that these solutions bring. The ability to draw structures and reactions, calculate properties, and structure/reaction-based search demonstrably increases the productivity of those scientists. Ironically, these solutions often don’t replace the Paper Notebook which is still required due to the concern that niche science-centric tool cannot provide adequate long term legal protection. However their value is only slightly diminished by the requirement to cut & stick into a Paper Notebook once the experiment has been completed.

For some scientific disciplines a gradual investment in IT tools, starting with a fairly typical desktop computer and then expanding into niche applications has provided them with all the tools they need to do their work. Once you deal with the legal issues, a lot of Discovery research looks a lot like any other kind of knowledge work and there’s a massive number of tools, sometimes already available to people for no additional cost, which can support that work. Indeed, one of the reasons the Paper Notebook is no longer suitable is that they are actually using those IT tools, and as a result a paper-based record keeping process is an unproductive overhead. Microsoft Office might not be blessed by the consultants as an ELN but it surely is the repository of more scientific thought and data than any “fully functional” ELN; that some products claim their similarity to, or integration with Office just reinforces the point! In these cases, project teams need to have a good answer to the CFO’s question “Why are you spending $1,000 a head to make Office harder to use?”

It is interesting to compare the health of the Medicinal Chemistry ELN market with the Biology ELN market, and indeed the discipline-neutral ELNs. Some have postulated that “Biology is next” and the approaches that work for a relatively homogeneous Medicinal Chemistry market will guarantee success in Biology. The implicit assumption is that Biologists have just been waiting for the ELN Gods to come and rescue them which rather implies that there are no biologists able to innovate in the same way as the chemists who developed the first Chemistry ELNs! A more realistic assessment might be that Biology is different – much more heterogeneous – which means the rise of a single Biology ELN is very unlikely. The adoption of the Biology-centric ELNs seems to be proceeding at a departmental level rather than the mass rollout to 100’s of scientists.

Historically the ELN industry has been pushing a “One size fits all” approach, perhaps more due to the agendas of IT departments and suppliers. These projects are necessarily large, complex, and of course come with an associated price tag. With increasing size, complexity, and diversity of users also comes increased risk, and the success rate of such heroic endeavors has never been good. Projects of this type, which were always hard to justify anyway, are increasingly out of step with the new commercial realities.

ELN 2.0: The Search for Value
If the traditional large-ELN model no longer fits, what options are there for organisations who still need to find a better replacement for the Paper Lab Notebook? Fortunately, there are a number of concepts which have grown out of ELN deployments outside of the Life Sciences industry (which never had the money to afford “ERP for R&D”-style approaches) which can allow organisations to tease apart their requirements and clearly identify what they need.

Using these approaches, organisations can often achieve swift return on investment (often in a matter of months) for minimal outlay and vastly reduced risk. The more a project can focus, build on what’s already in place and solve the problems that need solving then it will by definition involve less of everything - less requirements, less code, less consulting, less change, and less money. Smaller, quicker projects are vastly less risky than larger ones, are easier to get approved, and allow the organisation to react easily to changing business circumstances. By building a culture of “quick wins” they lay the foundation for further improvements in tools.

The two models which help tease part the “ELN” functionality are relatively straightforward and indeed most thinkers in this space have their own versions. Their real power comes when they allow project teams to understand what they have and what they need, and develop a road map such that the future is protected even though the initial project may not have the widest possible scope.

“Broad” and “Deep” functions
Most R&D organisations have more than one scientific discipline under their aegis. These groups will have developed their own suites of IT tools to help them do their work, everything from common desktop infrastructure to instruments and specialist tools. Some of these might be common to other groups, some will be very specific (and often unknown to anyone else). Meanwhile, the corporate-centric record keeping functions have remained in the commonly used Paper Lab Notebook.

By focusing on either the improvement of support for a particular niche or on replacing the paper notebook’s general record keeping process, projects can easily build on what’s already in place and achieve faster, more predictable ROI. Later projects run according to the same framework will by definition build on what’s already in place so there should be little scope for missed opportunities.

Vendor-driven approaches to use a single product for more than one area bring increased risk and often the promised cost savings are overwhelmed by the costs of replacing perfectly serviceable existing tools.

Levels of Abstraction

Not all of the “Stuff” sloshing around the lab is the same, and distinguishing between them helps tease out the best place to store things. For example instead of requiring a a system for storing experimental writeups to also be raw data storage, perhaps an existing file server can be used, with some additional tool support and links back and forth. The resulting system is cheap to run, costs little to acquire, and results in little disruption to existing practices.

ELN 2.0 by Design
Using these two models, project teams can clearly understand the different parts of the problem they face.

In cases where the demand for an ELN originates from Medicinal Chemists then clearly an ELN from one of the many vendors in this space will service that need, and as this is a relatively mature area of the industry a solution can be purchased in the traditional manner. However, teams should resist the vendor’s encouragement to view all scientists alike as non-chemists are unlikely to be well served by something that is primarily focused on Medicinal Chemists.

For Biology and other areas which don’t draw chemical structures, the demand for an “ELN” is often an expression of frustration by the scientists that they are using computers in their work, but are still forced to use a paper notebook. In that case, their needs may well be met by something that focused on the record keeping functions which are currently being performed by the paper notebook – an aspect rather inelegantly referred to as Patent Evidence Creation & Preservation (PECP). The scientists will rarely require any additional software but if they do it will be focused on particular niches - data management, additional workflow support etc. which will either be very specific or could easily be met with common software they probably already have as part of their standard desktop.

Most R&D organisations would feel a sense of discomfort if the possibility of “Silos” of information were to appear. Fortunately, PECP systems are by definition generally applicable and they can form the central repository of the organisation’s knowledge, available to all. A common PECP usefully reduces legal risk by ensuring common practices across the company, whilst freeing scientists to select their tools of choice without having to compromise as a result of legal considerations.

Summary
By focusing on what’s needed and building on existing investments, whilst avoiding the temptation of scope creep, project teams can give their scientists a replacement for the paper notebook for typically a tenth of the price, deployed in a matter of weeks. Always a proven approach, in today’s more austere environment the more realistic approach of ELN 2.0 might not be as exciting and produce as much consulting revenue, but it is the way to deliver real value, today.

Simon Coles is CTO of Amphora Research Systems and has been working with Electronic Lab Notebooks since 1996. An established authority on this area, he is also the author of ELNBlog.