Agile Business Process Management in Research Projects of Life Sciences

In life science laboratories the sub-process automation of methods with semi- or full automated, isolated solutions called islands of automation and several IT systems dominate. There are deficits in networking of these sub-processes. The R&D processes in the life sciences research are complex, flexible, unstructured, knowledge-intensive, distributed, and parallel; they use heterogeneous resources, and combine automated, semi-automated, and manual activities in high-variable process chains with a high number of control structures. This characteristic of LSA-processes makes high demands on an integrated process management that contains an interdisciplinary collaborative process control and the documentation of the global process from for example purchasing, sample storage, method development to analytics and interpretation of results as well as the extraction of knowledge. Using methods, techniques, and tools of business process management (BPM) in the life science automation offers the potential to improve the automation level, the networking and the quality of the life science applications. The authors investigate the suitability of the standard based methods and techniques of BPM for the introduction of a flexible, integrated, and automated process management in the heterogeneous and hybrid systems in life sciences. This article will be focusing on the advances made in distributed workflow automation in highly variable system and application environments of research projects by use of BPM methods and tools.