A journey through the
ELN jungle
Simon Coles
CTO
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Copies of these slides
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About Amphora
• Started in ELNs in 1996
• Globally deployed, fully electronic ELN
for Kodak
• Grew from there...
• Now work with large & small companies
• Biotechs, Pharma, Chemicals
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Who we work with
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Who we work with
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Industry
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What we do
• Patent Evidence Creation & Preservation
• Make lawyers happy
• Which means you can make scientists
happy
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What we do
• Sometimes our stuff is used...
• Standalone
• In conjunction with other “ELN”
products
• With in house systems
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jungle
noun
an area of land overgrown with dense forest and tangled
vegetation, typically in the tropics
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Welcome to the Jungle
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electronic lab notebook
noun
whatever a vendor has to sell
whatever the programmer wants to write
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Audience Survey
11 simonc@amphora-research.com

Audience Survey
• Do you have a Med. Chem ELN project (in
progress or complete?)
11 simonc@amphora-research.com

Audience Survey
• Do you have a Med. Chem ELN project (in
progress or complete?)
• Do you have other kinds of scientists?
11 simonc@amphora-research.com

Audience Survey
• Do you have a Med. Chem ELN project (in
progress or complete?)
• Do you have other kinds of scientists?
• Are you deploying into
• A regulated environment
• A discovery environment
11 simonc@amphora-research.com

So....
• You’ve decided to get an ELN
• Do you
• Buy a tool, and fit your work to the tool?
• Find out how you work, and buy/build a
tool to fit?
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The “ELN” Word
• Very ambiguous
• Probably best if you didn’t use it
• Say what you mean
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What do you mean?
• The term “ELN” means different things to
different people
• Somewhere the scientists will work
• A Patent Evidence system (& long term
record)
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Patent Evidence
• Typically this is a broad, thin layer
• Consistently applied across the whole
company
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Differences that make a
Difference
• There are 2 key aspects which impact the
character of your ELN implementation
• Regulated Vs Unregulated
• Industry
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Regulated or not?
• If you are regulated, chances you are talking
about process automation, enforcement,
and compliance
• This isn’t easy, but it is
• Relatively unambiguous
• Fairly well mapped already
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Industry/Company Type
• Life Sciences
• Biotech or Pharma
• Biology Vs Chemistry
• Multi-national Chemicals
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Chemistry Vs Biology
• In Life Sciences, the biggest distinction is
between Chemists and Biologists
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Chemistry
• Chemistry is pretty structured
• Buy (or build) them a Chemistry-centric
ELN and let them get on with it
• The selection process is detailed but at
least the work relatively consistently
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Sources of Chemistry
ELNs
• If you’re a big pharma, you’re probably
already set
• With varying success - this isn’t easy
• Solutions
• Buy off the shelf
• Build from what you have
• Vendor capture
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Sources of Chemistry
• In Biotechs, you probably can’t afford to
build or do vendor capture
• Unless Cheminformatics is a core strength
• So you’re going to have do as much as you
can with off-the-shelf (customised as
needed)
• Nice selection of vendors, have fun!
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Biology
• Massive diversity
• Lots of Microsoft Office and other “non
ELN” applications
• Best approach is to get out of their way
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Examples
• Nadine’s talk about J&J earlier
• Really good example of in-depth analysis
of process
• 98% approval rate on a project that size
is pretty stunning
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Large Chemicals
• Somewhat boring places you may or may
not have heard of
• But employ 1,000 of scientists and make
most of the fun stuff in your house and car
• e.g. companies like Kodak, BASF, PPG,
Milliken, USG, etc.
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Large Chemicals
• Massive diversity
• R&D is typically very close to the customer
• Tight timescales
• Low tolerance for “non-value add”
activities
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Large Chemicals
• The ELN project will “Open the can of
worms” in terms of
• The tools people are using
• The records they are creating
• The patent evidence that is generated
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General Purpose ELNs
• “You all use the same Paper notebook don’t
you?”
• “So surely you can all use the same
Electronic notebook?”
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General Purpose ELNs
• You can do it for small numbers of users
and certain styles of work (e.g. e2v)
• Where workflow is important
• For large numbers of users
• The diversity in process will kill you
• You end up building an expensive version
of Word & Excel
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General Purpose ELNs
Functionality
Number of users
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General Purpose ELNs
Functionality
Possible
Number of users
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General Purpose ELNs
Functionality
Possible
Possible
Number of users
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General Purpose ELNs
Functionality
Possible
Doomed to fail
The organisation will frustrate you
Possible
Number of users
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Front end tools
• Most organisations will end up providing
different front ends to different users
• Examples
• BMS, Solvay, all the other large companies
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Patents
• As a rule, what you need to do from a
Patent perspective is pretty generic
• You might have some specific needs, but
95% of what you need can be done off the
shelf
• This is one area where you want to stick
with convention
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Security
• In Life Sciences things are relatively sane
• In Large Chemicals, you get all the fun of
“Chinese Walls” created by Commercial
agreements
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Security
• This is another whole can of worms
• That didn’t really exist until the ELN came
along
• No one could find anything in the paper
notebook anyway
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Security
• Ultimately you have to do what the
organisation requires
• But you need to avoid massively complex
regimes
• If you do NDA-related Chinese walls, you
need to have that tagged into the record at
creation
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Records Management
• The Cinderella of ELN projects
• Desperately important
• Clearly something that’s dependent on your
own processes
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Conclusions
• Our original question
• Some thoughts
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Our Questions
• Do you
• Buy a tool, and fit your work to the tool?
• Find out how you work, and buy/build a
tool to fit?
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Conclusion
• Unless you have been specifically charged
with changing the workflow
• Don’t pick the fight
• You’re there to support the science
• Today and in the future
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Conclusions
• They’ve probably already got what they
need anyway
• Or a very good idea of what they need
• That’s why they asked for an ELN in the
first place
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Conclusion
• If you are charged with changing the
workflow
• That’s your project, not “ELN” or
whatever
• Try to keep the scope as small as possible
• Size and diversity will kill you
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Patent
• Stick with best practice unless you really
know what you are doing
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Security
• Do what you have to do
• But try to keep it simple
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Conclusion
• Chemistry - buy, or build, the best you can
• Biology - get out of their way
• Large chemicals - you’ll never fully
understand everything in detail
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