Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Although there appears to be no activity at present, the work is still avail-
able on the Web. The project was funded by the EPSRC at the University of
Southampton (UK) and led by Jeremy Frey. This project evolved into a broader
investigation of the possibility of remote control of experiments and is a
pointer to the electronic laboratory environment (ELE).
SmartTea now appears to have evolved into a more general e-science
project [17]. Current research is focusing on the challenges of the control,
monitoring, analysis, and dissemination of laboratory physical chemistry
experiments using Semantic Web and broker technologies, including environ-
mental factors associated with experiments.
19.11
THE OTHER ELN
Currently one size is expected to fi t all. All work is entered into the ELN,
including experiment design, some of which may be merely conjecture.
Such work has no place in a legal notebook—those that support patent
applications—as it can weaken the claims that are made based on the work.
This type of information should be contained in a personal notebook. If
scientists still have to carry around paper notebooks to capture this type of
information, then much of the value of the electronic environment is lost. Of
course this information is truly personal, and it will not be published to the
organization but the owner can promote it to become the basis of a full
notebook entry.
A major barrier to the adoption of an ELN will be ease of data entry.
Most people can still write faster, albeit with limited legibility, than they can
type. Voice input is attractive in the right circumstances; it is very fast but is
not practical in meetings. Tablet devices are the appropriate vehicle for con-
taining the information, but data entry will need to be simplifi ed. Tablet
devices rely on the relatively clumsy, human fi ngers to input data; they do
not have the precision of a mouse. This is inconvenient in, for example, chemi-
cal structure drawing and the entry of data into cells. Typically, only one hand
is available for the operation. This suggests that they will be most useful when
much of the data can be captured electronically, in process development and
execution, or where voice input is acceptable such as in fi eld trials.
Voice input still has its place and is a largely unserved technology; scanners
will have to become part of the tablet, as will information retrieval based on
scanned barcodes, and identifi ers such as digital object identifi ers (DOIs) will
also need to be supported as standard.
19.12
STRUCTURED AND UNSTRUCTURED DATA
Experimental records consist of both structured and unstructured data. An
experiment that strives to generate a new chemical or biological entity will
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