University researchers go paperless

WHILE the technology for paperless research is available, a true paperless laboratory may be a long way off.

UCT’s eResearch Unit is being steered in the direction of a paperless tracking solution to researchers with the help of SA research chair in cancer biotechnology, professor Stefan Barth.

A large part of patenting intellectual property in research is the ability to provide evidence in the form of meticulous record-keeping and verification of the lab activities.

As a result, Barth is helping UCT transition.

“It’s a matter of keeping track of the many lab notebooks written by each student and storing them safely. But once you have a number of students working on different types of projects, finding the data for a certain experiment in this paperwork becomes a challenge.”

Barth decided to move his laboratory to UCT from Germany two years ago.

“Here I envisioned a place where the knowledge shared between myself and laboratory members would be contained in a secure, persistent digital repository.”

Barth’s request took the eResearch Unit at UCT by surprise, but after extensive research they were able to help make his vision a reality through the use of OneNote, a Microsoft application already freely available to the UCT community under the Microsoft suite site licence.

According to Craig Leppan, business development manager at Assimilated Information Systems, digital document solutions will be fundamental to reaching tomorrow’s customers.

“Organisations that embrace digital in this way are realising the advantages of being able to quickly adapt business messages, product offerings and updates.”