Enabling Digital Agility in the Lab: Why Lightweight IT Solutions are Needed to Achieve Data Independence

Many laboratories today seem to fall into one of two extremes for data management: at one end, those that labor under complex, costly and customized IT infrastructures, such as LIMS or SDMS. At the other end are labs that still rely on pencil and paper notebooks, manual transcription, and basic Office tools. In this paper we will explore the need for new alternatives that support data integrity and interoperability with common scientific instruments, but with a low burden for IT installation. As the pandemic has taught us, future ways of working will demand more agile conceptions of the lab environment and more reliable access to remote data