Just to add to that. Looking at the gelML documentation, I would see that as a data file. Ideally this would be generated by some electrophoresis system. The 'lab book' would then point at that file as the 'product' of the procedure 'ran gel' with the inputs 'these samples'. A clever system would either a) pull the procedure and the inputs from the gelML file, or take these from the lab book and then add them to the gelML file.

My thinking primarily relates to the generation of samples. Once you get into instrumentation a lot of the issues are already taken care of by the systems available.