CHAPTER 3: Laboratory Informatics and the Role of a CDS

The aim when implementing a CDS in a regulated laboratory is to automate the business process and eliminate the paper records and substitute them with electronic ones. However, if we only consider just the CDS and do not interface it with any other applications how will the CDS operate? It will only operate with manual data input and paper output, which, if implemented in this way, is a potential waste of effort. This chapter will only consider the interaction of software applications and not the underlying business process to be automated in detail. For more information about optimising and streamlining the process automated by a chromatography data system the reader should read Chapter 9.