‘OnePoint’ – combining OneNote and SharePoint to facilitate knowledge transfer

Efficiency Analysis of an Interoperable Healthcare Operations Platform

(1) Develop an enterprise platform to unify isolated information, software applications and team members. (2) Assess the efficiency of one benefit of the platform through comparative testing of employee document retrieval times. (3) Evaluate the level of satisfaction among our target audience. We developed an infrastructure to integrate information throughout our practice and make it available on a unified, secure, and remotely accessible platform. We solicited our practice for volunteers to test the new system. All interested volunteers participated. Thirteen employees searched for the same four items in both the new system and our legacy systems. Testing was performed in the pre-deployment stage. In our evaluation, we introduced an innovative method to precisely and objectively obtain data through the use of a widely available tool which could be leveraged for a variety of other studies. On average, it took our participants 7 min and 48 s to find four assigned items in our legacy systems. It only took our volunteers 1 min and 1 s to find the same items with the new platform (p-value 0.002). On a scale of 10 being the highest level of satisfaction, participants ranked the new system to be 8.7 while the traditional system was ranked at 6.3. An overarching enterprise platform is critical due to the ability to unify otherwise isolated applications, people and documents. Because navigating a new system would be expected to take longer than a familiar one, we were surprised by the dramatically improved efficiency and satisfaction of our new interoperable platform compared to the status quo. Since this platform was evaluated in the pre-deployment stage, we expect results to improve with employee experience as well as ongoing enhancements.

Analysis and Implementation of an Electronic Laboratory Notebook in a Biomedical Research Institute

Electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) will probably replace paper laboratory notebooks (PLNs) in academic research due to their advantages in data recording, sharing and security. Despite several reports describing technical characteristics of ELNs and their advantages over PLNs, no study has directly tested ELN performance among researchers. In addition, the usage of tablet-based devices or wearable technology as ELN complements has never been explored in the field. To implement an ELN in our biomedical research institute, here we first present a technical comparison of six ELNs using 42 parameters. Based on this, we chose two ELNs, which were tested by 28 scientists for a 3-month period and by 80 students via hands-on practical exercises. Second, we provide two survey-based studies aimed to compare these two ELNs (PerkinElmer Elements and Microsoft OneNote) and to analyze the use of tablet-based devices. We finally explore the advantages of using wearable technology as ELNs tools. Among the ELNs tested, we found that OneNote presents almost all parameters evaluated (39/42) and both surveyed groups preferred OneNote as an ELN solution. In addition, 80% of the surveyed scientists reported that tablet-based devices improved the use of ELNs in different respects. We also describe the advantages of using OneNote application for Apple Watch as an ELN wearable complement. This work defines essential features of ELNs that could be used to improve ELN implementation and software development.