Many scientists and researchers still rely on Excel spreadsheets and lab notebooks to manage data from their experiments.
That can work for single experiments, but companies tend to make decisions based on data from multiple experiments, some of which may take place at different labs, with slightly different parameters, and even in different countries.
The situation often requires scientists to leave the lab bench to spend time gathering and merging data from various experiments. Teams of scientists may also struggle to know what the others have tried and which avenues of research still hold promise.
Source: “Software to accelerate R&D”, MIT News Office, Zach Winn
