LIMS - "Connecting Instruments to The Data Backbone"

Laboratory information management systems (LIMSs) are software packages that connect instruments, other software, and sample management to human operators and other data systems, including electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs).

Despite their independent developments for different tasks, distinctions between ELNs and LIMSs are not obvious, notes John McCarthy, VP of product management at Accelrys (San Diego, CA). ELNs occupy a supervisory position—a larger lab data management platform—that accesses the activities of LIMSs.

LIMSs tend to be application- or workflow-specific, resulting in different products for chemistry, biology, quality assurance, and related protocols. Notebooks handle a wider range of data and present them in forms that enable collaboration.

Bruce Pharr, VP for products and marketing at GenoLogics (Victoria, BC) adds laboratories are built around two key assets: workers and instruments. “The ELN is for the scientist; the LIMS is for the instrument,” he explains. The control panel for instrumentation serves as the LIMS user interface, whereas the ELN can be viewed as the control panel for the entire laboratory. The LIMS works around a structured data set, tracking samples from the time they enter a lab through the numerical results. ELNs, as replacements for paper notebooks, handle unstructured data as well.

Nevertheless, the two products are coalescing or converging for some operations such as sample preparation and identification. “If you’re in a lab notebook, you don’t want to have to switch to a LIMS to obtain a sample ID,” Mr. McCarthy says.

Data standards have become a huge focus area for LIMS developers. Standards are needed so that data repositories can communicate, for example, so a LIMS designed for one task can read data from a different LIMS.

Accelrys is working with three large pharmaceutical companies on standard LIMS interfaces based on BatchML (batch markup language) and B2MML (business-to-manufacturing markup language), extensions of XML (extensible markup language). XML is a way to encode documents for machine readability. These capabilities will allow new LIMS deployments to read data directly from legacy LIMSs, without the need to rekey data or transfer it to a word processing document.

In the past, LIMS purchase decisions were made at the laboratory level. Increasingly, companies select these products on an organizationwide basis. “There’s a pricing benefit, no doubt, but standardization—not having to rekey data—is the driver,” Mr. McCarthy says. LIMS interoperability may also be achieved through the ELN’s supervisory role, as mentioned, by applying an appropriate markup language.

LIMSs fit well with workflows that involve automation and require high reproducibility. GenoLogics’ specialty, for example, is LIMSs for nextgeneration genomics sequencing. This market is driven by the adoption of next-generation sequencers, which numbered 200 in 2007. Today, more than 1,900 such instruments have been deployed around the world.

GenoLogics has been receiving requests from labs requesting products that work out of the box and do not need to be specially configured. “These users don’t want custom implementations,” says Mr. Pharr.

Despite this trend, a LIMS may not make sense for many “low event” labs, many of which are comfortable inputting data manually.

Experiment Knowledge Base (EKB)

Speeds innovation in materials science
Improves laboratory efficiency and productivity
Supports sustainability strategies for scientific enterprises
Provides add-on components within the Accelrys Enterprise R&D architecture
Offers a flexible framework

Accelrys
www.accelrys.com

Track-IT™ 4.6

Enables reorganizing and tracking tubes and samples in just minutes
Compatible with most commercial barcode readers, scanners and tubesorter systems
Catalogues and organizes samples
Empowers laboratory scientists to manage sample data and information easily

Micronic
www.micronic.com

WIMS™ 7.2

Features enhanced electronic reporting
Includes additional interfaces with Hach instrumentation
New tools make Hach WIMS even easier to use with new wizards to quickly create dashboards, input forms, and variable lists making system and user configuration easier and faster

Hach Company
www.hach.com

Materials Management Software
Qualoupe

New materials manager capability enables users to easily define the wide variety of materials that they test in their organisation
Allows manufacturers to manage data relating to raw materials, finished products, and intermediate products
For commercial contract labs, improves the handling of data from routine samples sent to them for testing by their customers

Two Fold Software Limited
www.twofold-software.com