Focus on Quality — Validation of Spectrometry Software: Importance of Accurate Date and Time Stam

R.D. McDowall

When you write up your observations and notes in a traditional laboratory notebook, there are a number of features that help to ensure data integrity. The notebook pages are numbered sequentially and they are bound together. Therefore, if a page is removed, it is obvious immediately. When recording observations in the notebook, the order of the write-up is important and is enforced by the sequential or linear pagination of the notebook. The author signs and dates the recorded information and this is witnessed by a second person, who signs and also dates when they reviewed the work. Note that it is not usual to time and date signatures in a laboratory notebook.

Working in an Electronic Environment

In converting from paper to electronic work, there is not the same linear sequence that occurs in the paper world as the records generated are based around the application software operation. The workflow of the computerized system will define the way that the software works, but users can do many things within this. For example, a data system for a spectrometer can be used to set up the data acquisition parameters, acquire data from the sample, and then process the data to produce results. However, once data have been acquired, a user can review, interpret, and process a spectrum several times before a result is finally accepted. Because of the speed of computers, there is a need to record both the time and the date of any event in the system, typically down to a faction of a second.

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