Collaborative research is one of the justifications cited most often for acquiring lab data software. While such “soft” benefits are difficult to quantify, the “hard” benefits are easy to measure, after some digging.

LIMS and ELNs do not pose care and upkeep problems that an IT administrator does not encounter with any database system: performing data backups, building in redundancy, and having a plan for power outages.

Laboratories are awash in data. The two main data management packages in use today are laboratory information management systems (LIMS) for structured data such as pH values or sample weights and electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) for unstructured data such as images and chemical formulas.

In this Q&A, three expert end-users from three different fields discuss the data systems they use in their facilities, how easy those systems were to learn to use, and how the systems changed things in their labs.

For companies processing hundreds or thousands of plates per day, one could build a business case for switching to an automated pipetting system on throughput alone. Robots are faster and less expensive to feed and care for than humans are.

In this Q&A, five expert end-users from both academia and industry discuss the automated liquid handling systems they use in their labs, what they are used for, and how they went about choosing the systems.

Service and maintenance for liquid handling equipment are approximately the same as for a liquid chromatography system, but the type of service differs. All vendors offer typical levels of on-site service, with premium plans including preventive maintenance visits.

Automated liquid handling (ALH) grew from the high-throughput needs of medical diagnostic labs in the late 1980s through the 1990s and then received an additional boost from genomic sequencing. As it evolved from a specialized, expert-driven instrument system to a generalized laboratory workstation, ALH has become more accessible to more workers in more labs.

Stephen Barnes, Ph.D., Professor of Pharmacology & Toxicology and Director of the Targeted Metabolomics and Proteomics Laboratory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), talks about the changes taking place in the field of mass spectrometry.

In today’s economic climate, it is necessary to ensure that all purchased equipment will provide a return on investment.

Like much of the instrumentation used in life science laboratories nowadays, LC-MS instruments have become faster, more accurate, and easier to use over the course of their evolution. These days, there are specific minimum requirements that every

With lightning-fast speed, LC-MS systems have rapidly evolved into today’s highly functional tools. But where did they begin?