ELNs: Selecting the Right Solution for Your Organization

What can be more thrilling – and terrifying – than getting the budget to purchase new technology for your lab? For those with the funds and the responsibility to select an electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) for your organization, the decision can be lasting. You don’t want to get it wrong. 

According to experts the most important thing you can do is buy a solution that addresses challenges and achieves stated goals, not simply evaluate and purchase a product. This requires homework on the frontend, to carefully and deliberately outline the criteria that a successful deployment must meet. 

• What key outcomes do you need to achieve?
• What data must be entered, and how should it be stored so that you can do with it what you need?
• What is the workflow?
• How will it enable collaboration? Improve data quality? Protect IP?
• How easy is it to maintain, scale, and upgrade?

To select the best ELN for your needs, avoid seeking an abbreviation or exact automation of your paper methods. It is important to assess your needs beyond a simple translation of the paper-based tasks; use this as an opportunity to let technology drive enhancements – in productivity, collaboration, standards – that you may not have envisioned from a paper process.