Delivering on the promise of the paperless lab

ORGANISATIONS have made significant investments in enterprise and laboratory tools,technologies and solutions to help improve productivity, better manage data/information and optimise their business processes. However, the reality is that most companies have not reaped the return on investment (ROI) or efficiency gains that they planned. This article demonstrates how the Paperless Lab can improve efficiency, compliance and quality by integrating data silos and automating laboratory operations.

What is a Paperless Lab?

A Paperless Lab integrates the laboratory with the enterprise and automates systems by eliminating paper-based, manual and error-prone processes. Whilst most companies have invested in many instruments and software solutions in the laboratory, manufacturing and the enterprise to improve operations, these systems are not seamlessly integrated, creating data silos or standalone information repositories that do not communicate with one another. By automating operations and integrating these individual solutions, organisations can reduce paperwork, increase efficiency and throughput, automate regulatory compliance, reduce costs, foster collaboration and make faster, better informed business decisions (Figure 1).

What’s wrong with paper?

The benefits of using paper are evident. It’s easy to use, convenient, portable and legally defensible; plus, it requires little (or no) user training and supports multiple data types. Unfortunately paper also has some major drawbacks. It introduces security risks, it’s expensive, it’s not searchable, it’s not collaborative, there are significant storage issues and, perhaps most importantly, it’s error prone and susceptible to transcription mistakes. In any process, the handling of paper is almost always a manual (human) activity. And manual activity is inherently prone to errors. At the very best, for every 1,000 results transcribed from an instrument, the human will make, on average, 3-6 mistakes. Typical error rates increase to 3 per 100 transcribed results (or 30 errors for every 1,000 results) if any math or stress is involved. In addition, large volumes of paperbased data are difficult to store and practically impossible to search at alater date.

Why are customers looking for a Paperless Lab now?

None of this is new information. Companies have always recognised the potential benefit of integration across the enterprise, but they’ve been too busy focusing on other priorities. It wasn’t until recently, in a continuing effort to reduce costs, that companies have turned their attention to automating laboratory processes and/or instrumentation and integrating that data with existing ERP, LIMS, ELN and CDS systems, among others.

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