The Color of Water:
Electronic Lab Notebooks and Records–
Data, Technology, Policy
Ray Dessy
Tuesday, 3 November, 3:30-4:45 PM
Newman Library, 6th Floor Boardroom, Virginia Tech
The modern WebLab may ask "What is the color of raw data?" In regulated industries that color may be "first-collected". But modern Intranets, compound documents, multi-source spreadsheets and databases require other colors, other formats. This complex spectrum presents interesting demands on users, application software, and the transaction systems involved at various levels. This seminar examines lab worker's needs, plus technical and political trends driving the future of data formats and electronic lab notebooks.
For over a decade the Holy Grail of industrial labs has been an electronic lab notebook that would capture all research and development data at the bench, allowing it to be shared by colleagues, mined by succeeding researchers, and used by legal staff in obtaining and defending patent positions. Several large consortium efforts have failed, not because of technology, but because of psychology. Current efforts are problematical. What's happened?
In the last several years the Food and Drug Administration has taken a proactive stand on electronic records, advocating digital signatures and electronic submission of New Drug Applications. Unfortunately, their peculiar interpretation of the Federal Register 21 CFR Part 58.3k has left potential users of metafile architectures and standard data formats, such as ADIS/AIM/ANDI/AIA-NetCDF or J-CAMP
, in a thorny thicket. No one in the pharmaceutical industry wishes to contend the decision of Civil Action 96-2840, PUBLIC CITIZEN, et al., Plaintiffs, v. JOHN CARLIN, as interpreted by the FDA. What's the problem?The lab notebook needs to go digital. What's the solution?
"it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." (Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll)
"'Write that down,' the King said to the jury," in Lewis Carroll's classic, "and the jury eagerly wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence." Somehow, it made sense to Alice, from inside Wonderland.
Raymond Dessy
Dr. Dessy consults in the areas of lab automation, microsensors, high-throughput screening, electronic lab notebooks and intranets with pharmaceutical companies in the United States and Europe.
He has been a Plenary Lecturer at chemical information symposia in Maastricht (1991), Montpelier (1992), Montreux (1993), Oxford (1994), Bonn (1995), London and Nîmes (1996), Adelaide (1997) and Philadelphia (1998). He currently authors the "Webworks" column in Analytical Chemistry. He is a member of the advisory boards of the Internet Journal of Chemistry, the Association for Laboratory Automation, and the National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine's Automation in High Threat and Infectious Diseases Research.
Ray Dessy's research group has been the training ground for ~ 100 M.S., Ph.D. and post-doctoral fellows. Some 17% of these now occupy positions at universities in the United States, Canada, England and Australia. His group has produced ~225 publications. He has been a University professor for 40 years.
In the past twenty years he has presented ~500 lectures at Universities, corporate research labs, and professional societies. He has taught ~150 short courses for professional societies on various aspects of instrument and lab automation to ~5000 post-graduate industrial students.
Dessy received his Ph.D. degree at the University of Pittsburgh, and did post-doctoral work (synthetic organic chemistry) with Melvin Newman at Ohio State. He has been a Sloan Fellow, and an NSF Senior Post-Doctoral Fellow at UCLA and the University of Illinois (physical-organic and inorganic chemistry). He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Göteborg and Chalmers Technical Institute. He was awarded an Honorary D.Sc. from Hampden-Sydney for his teaching efforts. He was the first recipient of the "Computers in Chemistry" National Award administered by the American Chemical Society.