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ACD/Labs Blog

Sanji Bhal
Analytical data plays a critical role in R&D by supporting critical decision-making on a daily basis. Whether a synthetic chemist is looking to see if their reaction yielded the product they expected, a group of scientists in development are building an impurity control strategy, or experts in manufacturing are collecting data for regulatory submissions, applications of analytical data are ubiquitous. At a time when the volume of insight-rich data one can gather is extraordinary, chemists working in academic research, industry, and non-profit organizations alike face regular challenges in managing and sharing their data.

Graham Mcgibbon
The familiar crop of characters—Spock, Kirk, Uhura, McCoy, Sulu, Scotty, and Checkov—are understandably portrayed by different actors in the 2016 movie than in the origins of the STAR TREK franchise. Science fiction like this offers a view of the future imagined from past and present experience and it made me consider where data science is going, whether boldly or otherwise, and also, where it came from.

Graham Mcgibbon
There is widespread agreement that going digital will help us manage data better, make us more productive, more innovative and ultimately enable us to make smarter decisions—all the way from the bench to the boardroom. Yet, we remain relatively early in the transition from paper to paperless lab, despite the need for organizations to become more innovative and more competitive.

Sanji Bhal
At ACD/Labs, we have spent two decades working with customer organizations to support effective analytical data management. While we are privy to the problems of our customers, we wondered how the wider R&D community has been addressing analytical data management and what challenges remained. With that in mind, we decided to conduct a survey last year to gather feedback from scientists (62% of survey respondents), managers, directors, and executives (26%), as well as IT and other professionals (12%) to better understand the R&D landscape.