Course Information
Course Title: Long-Term Archival of Laboratory Data
Categories: 1 - Management/Professional Development
2 - Data Management
3 - Laboratory Information and Management
Instructor(s): Burkhard Schaefer Course Number: 125
Affiliation: BSSN Software
Course Date: 03/11/2012 - Sunday Course Length: 1/2 Day Course
Start Time: 01:00 PM End Time: 05:00 PM
Fee: $235 ($335 after 2/13/12) Textbook Fee:

Course Description
This half-day short course explores the challenges laboratories are facing when it comes to archiving data for long periods of time. We examine the drivers for long-term data retention and present various solutions to common issues encountered. The course starts by looking at the laboratory data landscape: Which applications do we use and what types of data get produced? We continue by describing what it takes to preserve such data for the long term, from the choice of storage media and file formats to information security. Throughout the course, we present numerous examples, best practices and tips for successful data archiving.

Target Audience
Individuals involved with or interested in long-term archival of laboratory data. The target audience for this class is laboratory IT decision makers and professionals from pharmaceutical, biotech, clinical companies, and research institutions. There are no prerequisites for this class.

Course Outline
- Introduction
- Different kinds of data and applications – examining the laboratory data landscape
- What does it take to retain access to laboratory data?
- Storage media and media reading capability
- File formats and standards (XML, AnIML)
- Preserving access to older software versions
- Relating data back to the original context
- Searching and retrieval
- Software as a service (SaaS) issues
- Electronic signatures
- Security and access control
- Validation
- Assessing total cost of ownership

Course Instructor's Biography
Burkhard Schaefer is an independent consultant specializing in laboratory informatics applications. He is a regular contributor to the Pittcon short course program and has been involved with the LECIS standardization effort at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the AnIML standardization project with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). He is currently working on standardized XML data formats for the documentation of laboratory workflows. He holds a Diploma of Computer Science from the Technical University of Kaiserslautern and has been teaching short courses for 12 years.