Electronic Laboratory Notebooks for academic research

The ways in which we store and access data are constantly improving, and one of the latest technologies to reach the academic environment is the Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN). Already well known in the pharmaceutical industry, ELNs hold great promise as tools to enhance research excellence by improving the capture, storage, searchability and sharing of experimental data.

ELNs for academic research are moving a step closer thanks to a new relationship between the Department of Chemistry and IDBS, a leading supplier of research data management to international R&D organisations. IDBS has been chosen to supply the Department with its award-winning laboratory notebook (E-Workbook) and will also enter a collaborative R&D initiative in research informatics.

Through the implementation of E-Workbook, which is already in use within commercial life sciences, engineering, manufacturing, energy and food technology organisations, IDBS will gain valuable knowledge as to how its existing functionality can be expanded to benefit the broad spectrum of academic chemical research carried out within the Department. And the Department in turn will use the system as a collaborative platform for many of its ongoing national and international academic research programmes.

The collaborative aspect of this relationship provides both organisations with significant cheminformatics assets and opportunities for future technology development.

‘Working as both a supplier and research collaborator with the Department of Chemistry is an exciting prospect for IDBS. We are confident that our existing capabilities will support the diverse research and data-sharing requirements of the Department. Working with some of the most advanced minds in the development of new chemical informatics technologies will allow innovative products to be brought to the market,’ said Neil Kipling, founder and CEO of IDBS.

Professor Robert Glen, from the Department of Chemistry, added: ‘We see this as an exciting opportunity to capture, analyse and investigate our data at a deeper level, enabling easy access and interrogation of results, and making research much more effective and faster. There is a great opportunity to research how we can expand functionality to all of chemistry – a big task but something that is a very worthwhile goal.’