The Electronic Laboratory Notebook Trap 19
An interesting discussion is taking place on the LinkedIn Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) Forum regarding the maturity of the ELN market.
Andrew Lemon of The Edge Software Consultancy starts off:
The ELN market continues to see new vendors enter. Despite some consolidation through acquisition by the larger players, it appears that there is still no clear leader in this market place. The market is becoming segmented into disciplines such as medicinal chemistry, biology, QA/QC, etc, together with generic ELN offerings.
Lets take a mature segment such as Medicinal Chemistry as an example, do you think there is a clear winner in this area?
It appears that whilst the larger suppliers seem to account for most of the top pharmaceutical companies there is an apparent even split across the top 3 ELN solutions.
Whilst I see good solutions to the problems of classical synthesis, solutions for parallel chemistry for example appear to less consistent.
The biology ELN market is at an even earlier stage. There is certainly no clear leader in this area and the real needs are only just emerging as solutions take different approaches to the problem.
It would be great to hear other opinions on the maturity of needs and solutions in across this space.
Here's the response I posted:
Interesting discussion. The importance of the "Who's winning?" question might have something to do with how you view ELN software. Here are some possibilities, but there are no doubt many others:
As a proprietary platform. Think Windows. Winner takes all, driving out all competitors and keeping them out until the next platform materializes. Margins for the winner will be very high, even as the market matures. Innovation will proceed well below potential for fear of fragmenting the market.
As a set of open standards. Think automobiles. Many vendors can co-exists for a long period of time, but margins decrease for most players as the market matures. Innovation will be high for some time, causing frustration with a segment of the market looking for stability.
As a product idea that hasn't yet solidified. Think the Internet in the late 1980s or online advertising in the late 1990s. There are huge opportunities for players that tweak the idea in the right ways.
I tend to view the ELN as being in the 3rd category for the simple reason that scientific organizations are still in the early stages of exploring what can be done when each of their scientists can (passively) connect with the activities of every other scientist, in real time, independent of geography and possibly - organization.
Even the term 'Electronic Laboratory Notebook' implies a way of thinking about the concept that may not hold up well over time. To me, this term implies something that does what I'm already doing as a scientist with my paper notebook - just in a new medium. No big deal.
And that may be the trap. Technically speaking, a blog is really nothing more than an 'Electronic Diary'. Its true impact is not technical, but social. The effects are both wide-reaching and extremely difficult to predict.
Its definately the 3rd option, but the established vendors are desperate to talk it up since it is completely in their interests to do so. When the market is still forming they are at a disadvantage to innovators such as our companies. However once the market matures they can make arguments based on financial stability (something which is in doubt for most), size(bidy count) and capability. From my experience neither are true, these companies rarely dedicate many staff to support or development of products. They operate matrix management spreading resources across an every increasing breath of products. This dilutes the effort and stifles innovation.
The concept of ELN is definately evolving, it started as paper replacement, but increasingly the weaknesses of this approach are being exposed since the data is in accessible. The concepts of a blog, wiki, calendar and other elements borrowed from solical networking environments are much stronger candidates to support the diverse and creating environment of research. Scientists need an environment that supports their collaboration, but provides tools that increase their productivity and ability to interaction data.
In BioRails we have started with the concepts of structured data and extended it to include features that support scientists to collaborate, capture observations and work results up into documents for publication that contribute to shared knowledge. This was influenced much more from the world of the blog and wiki than the rather traditional ELN. The result however is definately a ELN and currently supports lots of biologist working in drug discovery from screening to in vivo research.
Electronic Laboratory notebooks are becoming increasingly popular and important because of government regulations such as 21CFR11, which specify how records must be kept, digitally signed and archived in ways which will be subsequently acceptable in legal or regulatory proceedings. There are some free ELN's out there but you get what you pay for. I work for Rescentris Inc who make CERF, the only ELN that is both Mac and Windows compatible and fully 21CFR11 compliant. Obviously I am biased, but we believe our product is the best. CERF is infinitely flexible, extensible, and customizable. It contains search features that are optimized specifically for metadata related to the life and natural sciences. Check it out at www.rescentris.com
@Andrew, it will be very interesting to see how ideas and techniques from the Web at large are incorporated into ELN-like software.
@Rob, it looks like Rescentris is a Swing-based Java desktop application. I've also noticed that a lot of ELN software is distributed as a thick client. What were your reasons for going that route over browser-based?
@Rich We believe that, only a dedicated thick client can provide us with the richness of function, security, speed and reliability that we want in order to give the customer a truly flexible and feature-rich experience. We also believe that java gives us an edge over our competitors because it means we can offer this richness in a mixed platform environment. End users have the same experience regardless of whether they are using a mac or a windows machine, but the experience goes beyond what a web interface can offer. Go to www.rescentris.com and schedule a webcast if you would like to learn more about CERFs many features.
Rob, interesting. Can you give an example of one or two Rescentris features that would not have been as feasible when done as a browser Web app?
@Rob, does CERF support chemical reactions in the context of a synthesis laboratory? I had a quick look at www.rescentris.com and did not found this feature.
@Rob, BioRails is 100% zero client so its compatible any OS that supports a good browser including Mac so I don't think CERF is the only solution in that space, but I'm sure a good one regardless.
We use Java Script to get the same rich user experience from a web application and the Ruby on Rails framework allows us to provide some amazing integration features.
We offer a community version under GPL v2 although all our clients so far have licensed the full commercial version since they all want the support it offers.
BioRails is focused on biological research rather than chemistry although we integrate with chemistry tools and offer inventory support.
We have taken a much more structured approach to data capture than many ELN offerings in this space providing the support to conduct real analytical searches across data captured which is essential for most biological disciplines.
@Rob, how does this contrast to CERF in terms of approach? Do you provide support for protocol driven experiments and searches across dimensions of data?
I agree on the importance of 21CFR P11, but I find most companies take that as given these days and are more interested in how they exploit data captured in ELN once they know its protected. This is where there is greater differentiation between solutions.
For anyone interested see http://www.biorails.org/ or http://www.edgesoftwareconsultancy.com/
@ Andrew and Rich; Yes, you are of course correct that the browser based approaches work on multiple platforms. That is clearly one of the strengths of that approach. I should have been clearer in that as far as I know CERF is the only "non web app" ELN that comes in identical mac and windows flavors. As far as data capture goes; CERF can be (and typically is) customized with templates and plugins to accommodate almost any kind of structured data capture from any source, local or remote. The advantages of a thin client are many, but don't take my word for it, check out this independent view of the case against web apps:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/fatalexception/archives/2009/01/thecaseagains.html
There are of course some advantages to the browser-based approach, but it's not the direction we have chosen.
@bruno, I'd need to know exactly what you want to do but CERF does support inline viewing of chemical structures.
@ Andy - an unrelated comment... I have many happy memories of attending the Army Show in Aldershot. Windsor, Berks is my home town. I may be in the UK in May. Perhaps I'll swing by for a visit and we can chat over a pint.
@Rob - We're just moving to Offices in Guildford so do come over, would be create to meet and beer always helps :-)
Let me know nearer the time mailto:alemon@edge-ka.com
PS: There's no easy route browser compatibility is still an issue just like the jvm...
http://weblog.infoworld.com/fatalexception/archives/2009/01/thecaseagains.html
The forum may have a problem with the formating of the previous link. The last part should be:
2009/01/thecaseagains.html
or just search for do a google search for "The case against Web apps" by Neil McAllister.
Yup ... whoops... this forum doesn't like underscores.
Just go with the google search, sorry for any confusion!
Speaking of which... I swear, I AM human but am I the only one having a heck of a job reading some of the captcha verification words? Maybe my eyes. ravages of age and so-forth.
Interesting discussion. It might be useful to post an article on where thin-client Web apps work best in science (chemistry).
@Rob, in comments you can use Markdown for formatting and linking, which eliminates most of the need for underscores, or you can escape with the backslash character (e.g., \_). Preview will show how your comment looks when formatted.
I'm not real happy with the way the comment system works on my blogging engine - it's on my list of things to fix in 2009.
The link you cited can be found at The Case Against Web Applications.
This is a very interesting discussion. But I think that if you step back from everything and ask yourselves "what is it that you are trying to solve?" may help with some answers.
The name ELN is awful, it just means so many different things to different people. Interestingly most people associate it to thick client front end systems where the researcher can draw their structures. But is that what your paper lab notebook does now? Your notebook is the proof of what the researcher has done but also what they were thinking. It should be like their footprints within the organisation. Lab notebooks are kept for various reasons but mainly they are used to capture IP. So why do Big vendors call their products ELN's?
I agree with @Rob the use of Java to get the rich functions over the web and not disturb the client machines is easier all round. At the end of the day scientists are there to do the science not be hassled by software vendors.
My point to @Andrew would be the more structure you put to a Biologist surely the more they back away. Thats the point of Biology they never work in the same way, like chemists do. Why do you think there isn't a top class Biology ELN. The best one I know is The office suite.
I should explain that I am from Amphora Research Systems, our product PatentSafe seems perhaps different from the rest but we think that maybe thats a good thing. We don't want to become like one of those "big vendors" who lose sight of what it is we are trying to solve and thats making the lives easier for the scientist. We know we have won when the scientist doesn't even realize they are using PatentSafe.
@Jo,
Well put. And there's got to be more than one way to do that well.
I had a look at some of Amphora's site and Simon's ELNBlog. One of his posts comparing ELN to ERP struck a chord with me; a lot of these systems are quite complex and require large-scale organizational changes to work. Amphora seems to take a more Getting Real approach, which I hadn't until now seen.
You may be interested to hear that CERF by Rescentris Inc. was just awarded "Best in Show" at 2009 "Bio-IT world" conference in Boston, MA.
More information about Bio IT world is here: http://www.bio-itworldexpo.com/
Hi @Joe, we have found a lot of biologists that seem to like a combination of a structured and unstructured approach in one system. It makes their data much more useful and integrates their work better into the rest of the organisation. The key was to make it easy to use and not reliant on IT. So I agree it needs to be user centric and non-intrusive.
I also agree with the office comment which is why we integrate with it and allow the biologists to use Office but still share their data afterwards with some structure ;-)
The beauty of this business is there is room for all of us.
We share your focus on helping scientists although our approach is obviously a little different.
I agree ELN is not a well targeted term, but people like to see labels on goods it makes shopping easier. The alternative was to try and come up with our own label and that seemed a little too indulgent.