The electronic conversion specialist for lab notebooks in biotechnology and pharmaceutical research.
IDC is made up of a team of professionals who utilize specialized equipment, software and proven processes to ensure that clinical research documents, specifically lab notebooks, are tracked, accounted for, electronically converted properly, and indexed with the correct metadata, which is extracted and linked to the electronic file.
We’ve developed a very rigorous and time-tested set of standard operating procedures. These SOPs have met the test of a number of audits conducted by our life science clients and have consistently achieved high marks.
Converting microfilm
As part of our service offering, we can convert and index older lab notebooks that have been stored on microfilm or microfiche to an electronic format. The age and condition of the microfilm or fiche requires specific conversion equipment and stringent quality control processes.
IDC understands the irreplaceable value of lab notebooks
IDC recognizes the notebook is a primary record of research done, serves as a research aid, organizational tool, memory aid and plays a major role in protecting the intellectual property that comes from the research.
Accountability and tracking is critical, because a lost lab notebook or incorrectly indexed lab notebook data can adversely impact research, product development and the outcome of litigation.
IDC allows for the special characteristics of lab notebooks
The characteristics of notebooks necessitates the utilization of special processes and equipment to effect an electronic conversion that yields and exact and useable electronic copy that can be searched and researched across a network.
The expert processes we use to convert lab notebooks
We utilize specially designed book scanners that capture the highest quality image from the bound pages.
We capture images in either color or high resolution gray-scale to ensure readability, regardless of print color or print size.
We use proprietary software to provide a very high, lossless compression of the images to facilitate storage and retrieval. Our proprietary software can reduce a 50mb file by up to 60%, making storage and retrieval much more manageable – and with no loss in quality.
The confidence of on-site conversion
Due to the inherent value of the data within the lab notebooks, most clinical research organizations will not allow the books to leave their site. In this case, we take our equipment, personnel, software and systems to our customer’s site and perform all conversion activities at their facilities.
Migration of paper and legacy research documents and data
Mergers and acquisitions often result in a hybrid of paper and legacy data files that must be converted, mapped and migrated to a common EDM platform. IDC has the experience, bandwidth, systems and processes to effect a timely and accurate conversion, mapping and migration of those documents and data.