Short Course Description

Designing and Implementing the Electronic Laboratory

Business pressures are forcing the pharmaceutical industry to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Analytical Laboratories are one of the rate limiting areas where often the business is waiting on the analytical results before making a decision on what to do next or release a product. Efficiency improvements are clearly and urgently required but how should a laboratory plan to achieve them?

The paperless laboratory has been a dream for a number of years. Now we have the regulation in 21 CFR 11 (electronic records and electronic signatures) that allows us to work electronically and sign records with electronic signatures. There are many applications and automated systems available that can be implemented and integrated to make the laboratory paperless. The problem is that do laboratories have the vision to do this? Many laboratories have LIMS, ELN and instrument data systems but often the only way these systems are interfaced is by paper printouts and manual data entry.

This short course is designed to

Who Should Attend

• Laboratory managers
• Senior laboratory staff
• IT and QA staff involved in paperless laboratory, LIMS or chromatography data system projects

How You'll Benefit From This Course

• Learn how to develop a strategy for a electronic laboratory
• Learn why its important to map and optimize your business processes and how to do it
• How to phase the implementation of the individual projects that will comprise your electronic environment

Course Topics

• The Electronic Laboratory: Concept and Principles
• Understanding and Improving Your Current Ways of Working
• Workshop: Redesigning a Laboratory Process or Workflow
• Components of the Electronic Laboratory
• Planning and Implementing a Strategy for an Electronic Laboratory
• Workshop: The Devil is in the Detail

Course Fee: US $500/$600*

Course Format: Lecture

Class Limit: 40

Instructor:

Robert D. McDowall, Ph.D. McDowall Consulting Bromley, Kent United Kingdom

Bob McDowall is an analytical chemist with over 30 years experience and 20 years experience of LIMS and electronic working. Bob edited the first book on LIMS and has published extensively on the subject with over 60 published papers and more than 50 workshops on the subject run at international symposia and meetings. The LIMS Institute in recognition of his input to the subject and teaching presented him the 1997 LIMS Award. He is Principal of McDowall Consulting and was Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Surrey, UK from 1991 to 2001.

* higher fee applies to those who are not ALA members