The lab’s laboratory information management system (LIMS) may be one of its biggest investments and projects. Many LIMS installations are hampered by IT requirements, customization, lack of connectivity, high cost of ownership, and lack of effective upgrades. Modern LIMS applications use software as a service (SaaS) and cloud computing to provide right-sized, scalable, and adaptable solutions to labs of any size.
To learn more about modern, cloud-based LIMS, we talked with Justin Lavimodiere, senior director of LIMS strategy at Veeva Systems. With nearly 20 years of experience in laboratory informatics, Justin helps manufacturing and quality organizations optimize efficiency, accessibility, quality, and compliance through digital transformation.
Q: How big is a modern LIMS? What capabilities do they have that are relatively new to LIMS, or that used to be accomplished by separate systems?
A: “A modern LIMS should be tailored towards the industries that it’s serving and be easy to scale up and down. Gone are the days of commoditized LIMS. Veeva is very good at providing right-sized, industry-specific solutions that offer a rapid deployment. That’s the power of SaaS and built-in best practices. There’s no infrastructure that the customer must worry about, and customization has been drastically reduced, creating a smaller validation burden. So, from that perspective, the deployment and technical footprint is small, but the impact is big, scalable, and adaptable.”
Q: What elements of a modern LIMS do labs need to be most aware of when selecting a product and a partner?
A: “Not all vendors are created equal. Finding the right software and partner is key. Look to those who listen to the customer, innovate, and are highly motivated to help the industry transform.
Choose a partner who is keenly interested in long-term customer success. Veeva develops our products in concert with customers—listening, understanding, and learning from their feedback to help make the software better. Our roadmap is driven by customer priorities and requests.
When selecting a product, be mindful of the many flavors of cloud and SaaS; they’re not all created equal. Veeva’s specific flavor is a multi-tenant, fully configurable SaaS application. All our customers are on the same version at the same time. We don’t have to install a LIMS individually at every customer, and that’s a game-changer. The application of SaaS into the lab provides the agility and the innovation that the industry needs.”
The application of SaaS into the lab provides the agility and the innovation that the industry needs.
Q: Modernizing a LIMS can be a massive project. What are some hidden challenges that labs need to be aware of?
A: “Traditionally, these have been significant projects, and that’s in part due to the characteristics and limitations of legacy LIMS technology. Avoid solutions requiring on-premise infrastructure, multiple modules or applications to support the business process, and a high degree of custom code. Something that is often missing is good organizational change management. Empowering teams with the resources, training, and purpose of the change can help with adoption and long-term success.”
Q: How can labs reduce the burden of modernizing their LIMS?
A: “Choose the right products with the right partner. Transformation is about improvement and change. Standardize and simplify your process and infrastructure, and focus on long-term scalability and agility. The industry, despite the differences in products and modalities, is not doing things radically differently in QC from site to site, company to company. Most of the processes can be standardized to avoid ballooning of scope or long-term total cost of ownership problems. Consider a phased approach to implementation that focuses on key priorities and allows the lab to learn if the LIMS can meet requirements and confirm if they can be delivered.”
Q: For labs with specific missions like a QC lab, what should lab managers prioritize to drive meaningful change?
A: “Process standardization—align with industry standards and best practices and move away from specialization and heavy customization. Consider connectivity across the quality function by bringing together processes and data within a single quality management platform. Understand which data drives business processes and which ancillary data is valuable for business intelligence and analytics. Optimize how the data flows from the bench through your business applications and beyond.”
Q: With the growth of AI, the rate of change is faster than ever for lab informatics. From a LIMS perspective, where do you think we’re heading in the next two to five years?
A: “AI will completely transform the way a lab works, bringing new insights and efficiencies to quality control. But before a company can leverage AI, they must have their house in order. There will be a continued shift towards cloud platforms that provide better scalability, accessibility, and connectivity for the full digitization of processes and data collection. A digital data foundation is an important prerequisite for the application of agentic AI. As the industry looks to improve the quality, speed, and delivery of medicines at lower cost, agentic AI will be a big enabler.”
A digital data foundation is an important prerequisite for the application of agentic AI.
Q: How much do modern LIMS embrace AI or ML applications to make the work faster and more insightful?
A: “A modern LIMS should have a clear path to offering agentic AI. It is time to move the industry beyond commodity chatbots. I think Veeva has taken a very pragmatic approach to AI. It must be compliant and trusted. Veeva AI will deliver agentic AI in the platform, enabling customizable deep application agents and allowing configuration of new custom agents. The intent is optimization beyond what can be achieved through standard automation.”
Q: Are there any new requirements about the organization or structure of the data for it to work properly with the AI?
A: “I don’t think these are necessarily new requirements. Data must be digital, holistic, standardized, and contextualized. Regulatory agencies and technology partners can help drive standardization to help with that. Standard workflows, taxonomies, and common data architectures are needed.”
Q: As labs consider their LIMS situation, what’s the most important thing they need to be thinking about?
A: “There is a lot of buzz around AI because it offers so much potential. But the optimal approach for labs is to plan to modernize, standardize, and connect first. The time for that is now. The early adopters will gain huge benefits. The laggards will have a very hard time playing catch-up. Labs adopting industry-specific cloud-based LIMS will have a head start. If I were planning a transformation, I would start with this critical business system.”
Scott D. Hanton, editorial director for Lab Manager, can be reached at shanton@labmanager.com.
