Enabling quality in the face of restrictions

COVID-19 has impacted our ways of working throughout the world. Due to recommendations and restrictions, remote work has become the new normal for everyone whose work does not require physical presence. In laboratories, analyzing samples requires physical presence, but there are also tasks that suit well for remote work. Among them are data analysis related to validations and verifications using Validation Manager, and managing participation to external quality rounds using EQA Manager.

Benefits of using cloud based services in laboratory quality management are today more evident than ever, and they go beyond just enabling remote work.

Reducing risks of infection and contamination

When an office runs with paper documents, information is carried from room to another with papers. Multiple people may be handling the same sheets of paper. Especially when people move to clean room areas, paper is one source for contamination risks.

Digitalisation reduces need for decontamination and sanitation as there’s less paper laying around and transferred from room to another. And when information moves digitally, there’s less need for people to run around fetching papers. This again reduces risks of contamination, but also risks of infection as there’s less need for physical presence in shared rooms.

Information security

With cloud based services, data security is a key issue. It’s about being safe that the data will not be lost, and that outsiders will not have access to it. What people often seem to forget is that these same risks apply to all other ways of storing data as well.

People tend to find ways for doing their work. When that work can not be stored in a cloud, it is stored locally on computers and on sheets of paper. If there is data that can be found only from one computer or sheet of paper, risk of loosing that data is much higher than with cloud solutions. And if the data is stored in multiple places, and people are carrying papers home and using their personal computers and e-mails to be able to do their work, you easily end up in a situation where your data security is compromised and you won’t even know if someone outsider gets access to it.

Cloud based services such as Validation Manager and EQA Manager enable you to access information safely from multiple places.

Always up to date

When data is stored locally, it is not uncommon that multiple people end up updating the same file on their personal computers at the same time, or someone forgets to upload their latest version to the shared folder from which others go look for it. When these people work in the same room at the same time, these situations may be spotted quite early, which prevents useless work to some extent. In times of social distancing, these problems may get out of hand.

Cloud based services such as Validation Manager and EQA Manager enable everyone to have an access to the latest information.