What can a good Electronic Document Management System do for you?

Research shows that a good part of the average workday in a laboratory environment is spent looking for documentation. Even if only 15 minutes per day was spent looking for SOP's or test results within your lab, if you do the math -15 minutes a day multiplied by the number of staff members in your organization multiplied by 200 working days a year equals a lot of more time to spend on revenue generating work.

Factor in, also, the cost of the occasional lost document. Include a dash of embarrassment when you 'fess up' to your clients that you have lost data. All of a sudden a document management system looks like a sensible investment.

So, what is a Laboratory Document Management System?

A LDMS provides an easier way to manage all of your laboratory documents and data. The key to electronic document management is that you really don't care where the file sits on a hard drive or file server, you just want to be able to retrieve and access it quickly. A LDMS affords you this advantage, plus a whole lot more.

How does it work? Generally, when you save a document in the LDMS, a profile about the document needs to be entered. This might include the document title, document type, key words and perhaps some sort of identification number. Sometimes some of the required information will be pre-populated, for example, the date, your name as the creator of the document and so on. After you fill out that screen, the document manager continues the "save" and files the document for you. The profile information is stored as metadata and can be easily retrieved without you having to remember the exact title of the document or where you stored it.

How Does Electronic Document Management Help You?

The big advantage is in being able to retrieve files much more quickly and easily. That's where your 15 minutes a day comes in. 15 minutes less each day browsing folders and trying to locate files. Other helpful features let you do full text searches across your hard drive or network, organize your documents in a structure meaningful to you and share the "knowledge" accumulated in your documents with other users.

Full Text Searching: Laboratory Document Management Systems index files on a regular basis to let you do fast full text searches of all your files. Many organizations have electronic document management programs for this feature alone.

Improved File Structure: Since the physical location of a file does not matter in a LDMS, you can organize and file your information in a manner that reflects whatever your internal business process may warrant.

Shared Information: Depending on the number of users, collaborative knowledge can be shared with other users in your organization more quickly. As a result, reaction times to that information are quicker allowing for the extra time to be allocated towards revenue-generated work.

Project Management: You can also use a LDMS to manage important project information. Correlating data and documents together in one project can be a key feature in a good LDMS. Data and workflows can be easily set-up to allow mangers to actively interact with other members of their staff. Document review, evaluation, approval processes etc, are some unique ways that allow information within your organization to be processed more efficiently.

FDA Compliance: A good LDMS must be fully 21 CFR Part 11 compliant. Attributes to consider are electronic signatures, version control and full audit trails. The result should be an innovative and validated solution that integrates smoothly with your existing data storage applications (LIMS).

Benefits for Small Organizations

Even for smaller organizations there are benefits to using LDMS. Systems created for smaller organizations tend to include a suite of applications that not only assist the firm with electronic document management, but also document creation and precedents, management practices, billing and sales tracking.

Benefits for Medium Sized Firms and Up

For medium and large firms the benefits of an electronic document management system are obvious. The sheer volume of documents created is sufficient reason to consider a system that enables those documents to be managed more effectively. Version control is an extremely important attribute that allows only the most recent version of a document to be stored in a system at any one particular given time. Also, another advantage is having documents relating to a matter easily accessible by multiple people working on files, often in different departments.

Investing in a LDMS?

1. Understand the benefits you expect from the system.
2. How easy is it to deploy?
3. How easy is it to use?
4. How easy is it to maintain?
5. How does your cost compare to other products for what you are getting?