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Access Agilent eNewsletter May 2016

Agilent OpenLAB Electronic Lab Notebook gives biopharma company a competitive edge

Gloria Olivier, Agilent Product Manager, OpenLAB Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN)

As demand for more efficient scientific discovery increases, laboratories are seeking to improve the way their results are captured, analyzed, and shared. Agilent’s OpenLAB Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) is a high productivity alternative to traditional paper notebooks. OpenLAB ELN makes it easy to delegate tasks, track progress, share data, validate experiments, and much more. In this article, discover why AbSci chose Agilent OpenLab ELN when they decided to upgrade to electronic laboratory notebook.

AbSci, a biopharma startup based in Portland, Oregon, has invented a powerful protein expression platform for producing high yields of potent yet hard-to-manufacture antibodies.

Currently licensing their technology to major pharmaceutical companies, AbSci is helping its customers scale-up production and bring promising new antibody-based therapeutics to market.

The fast-paced research environment often requires staff members working through the night to push scientific progress. They depend upon their lab productivity tools to give them an edge, and not hold them back.

To that end, Dr. Phil Barish, AbSci’s Vice President of Operations, knew from the start that their laboratory notebook would be electronic, not paper.

The reasons were obvious—“being able to look back at your research, being able to search your data, and having it be accessible to everyone”—but the question remained: Which electronic lab notebook?

The challenge

Members of the AbSci team had experience with notebooks from various vendors and found them lacking. They had been frustrated with their inability to organize data, protocols, and notes in a manner that made sense. While inputting data was relatively easy, they were finding it increasingly difficult to extract meaningful insights due to the notebooks’ lack of search capabilities and its inability to organize page layouts as anything other than long, overwhelming lists.

They wanted a solution that went beyond paperless documentation—one that could do more than store and secure their intellectual property. They sought a platform that could help them analyze and share results with each other in a meaningful way—especially during shift hand-offs.

Since AbSci team members also work remotely, they needed a way to give everyone—from the CEO to bench scientists—easy access to the information they require to analyze results, track progress, prepare presentations, and make faster, better-informed decisions.

The company also wanted to move data from a public cloud to their own private server.

“We narrowed our decision down to Agilent and another competing vendor, and the other vendor’s prices were higher. Agilent had comparable capabilities at a better price.”

Phil Barish, PhD

The right solution for AbSci

After reviewing all of their options, Barish and his team selected the Agilent OpenLAB Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN).

“We did competitive analysis,” he says. “The cheaper notebook that we looked at didn’t have the capabilities of Agilent. We narrowed our decision down to Agilent and another competing vendor, and the other vendor’s prices were higher. Agilent had comparable capabilities at a better price.”

The desired capabilities included:

  • The ability to tag notebook pages with keywords so that entries can be located in several ways instead of forced to reside inside of a single folder.
  • Greater flexibility to organize data using chapters, tabs, tables, images, hyperlinks, and more. (Say goodbye to long overwhelming lists.)
  • A choice of cloud or non-cloud options.

With Agilent OpenLAB ELN, the AbSci team can position the most important data front and center on the page, with auxiliary information kept out of the way yet still easy to find as additional chapters, tabs, or hyperlinks.

In short, everyone can quickly find and access the information that they’re looking for, giving AbSci a solid foundation for maximizing their intellectual property assets.

The software enables them to mine and integrate scientific information, quickly and easily, across many experiments over time. As a result, the whole company can make better-informed decisions, faster and more efficiently.

OpenLAB ELN can benefit your lab today

Agilent OpenLAB ELN is a flexible laboratory notebook solution that allows you to quickly and easily capture, manage, and share all types of laboratory information. OpenLAB ELN creates a central hub for team members to organize and share information and is available on mobile devices—meaning you can collaborate in real time from any location. To learn more about how your laboratory can benefit from adopting Agilent OpenLAB ELN, watch this video or see it in action here.