Enabling a Data Management System to Support the "Good Laboratory Practice"

Abstract

Conducting experiments and documenting results is daily business of scientists. Documentation enables other scientists to confirm results, reassure interpretations and therefore increase the experiment's credibility. These every day action are regulated and shortly described as: "good laboratory practice". Due to computerized research systems experimental data get more elaborated, this increases the need for electronic notebooks with data storage and computational features. The aim of this thesis is to develop a new approach to substitute paper based notebooks. The new approach shall simplify the scientist's work. With the constraint, that it has to stay as evidential and credible as before. Some of the analysed requirements for laboratory notebooks are traceability of a data item, credibility of an object and preservation mechanisms. The approach of this thesis is to enable an open source data management system with necessary features for a laboratory notebook. As technologies provenance, digital signatures and secure web services are integrated into the data management system. This enriched data management system supports the scientist in his daily work which helps him to concentrate on research.