Design of laboratory information management system as a knowledge creation tool for the KMS of BT laboratory

Abstract

The biotechnology industry has been growing rapidly due to the introduction of technology of molecular leveled approach to organisms. As a result of this approach, we have a draft of the human genome map that is expected to influence various other changes in the biotechnology industry. From this point of view, biotechnology laboratories, as the foundation of the biotechnology industry, need more collaboration with other related fields such as chemical engineering, electronic engineering, and mathematics. In order to fulfill more complicated requirements, research workers are supported by LIMS, which has the role of integration with total environment in laboratory, clearance of sample tracking, and monitoring of various kinds of experimental instruments. Successful implementation of LIMS makes it possible to contribute to the improvement of the effectiveness of the laboratory environment by transforming it from a labor-intensive laboratory into a knowledge-based laboratory. However, today``s biotechnology industry faces the threat of the stagnation in spite of constant investment. Our research tried to seek a solution to this problem from a knowledge management perspective among the various factors. Knowledge management, which has the works of retrieval, storage, transformation, and presentation of knowledge, could be one of the keys to solving current problems in biotechnology laboratories. As a first step of transforming a laboratory into a ``knowledge-based`` environment, we discuss the LIMS as a role of knowledge source provider. This paper shows the possibility of knowledge creation from experiment data sets and stored in LIMS, and presents a conceptual model for it.