Imagine what you could do if you reduced the amount of time your staff spend manually collating reports, preparing samples, performing calculations, etc. There are significant savings to be found by reducing the time spent on these manual tasks and your scientists and lab personnel will be able to spend more time on value-added activities that generate revenue. Integrating the lab’s workflow and instrumentation within a laboratory information management system (LIMS) gives your lab personnel the freedom to focus on the science of the lab, while knowing that the data and documentation necessary for reporting and compliance is available for access within the LIMS when it is needed. 

While many water laboratories currently use a LIMS for some activities related to managing samples or lab workflow, on the whole much of the sample and related data management is still done using manual collection and reporting processes using either paper lab notebooks or spreadsheets.  Manual processes introduce a certain level of risk: manual processes are error prone, the data is not searchable or collaborative in any way, and any manual process is more time consuming, taking lab managers and systems operators away from more value added work. 

Today we’re talking about the use of LIMS (laboratory information management systems) at chemicals manufacturing companies. These companies are challenged to be more agile than ever in their business processes. Because market forces are continuously driving these companies  towards a more diverse portfolio of customers, all with more specific product requirements, the organization must keep pace with these competitive changes. Agility in business requires agility in the laboratory.  Your day to day concerns in the laboratory are now the concerns of the business and just might have to do with the improving margins, maximizing yield and resolving quality problems.

One of the major goals of the translational research movement has been to bridge the gap from bench to bedside and any initiative to blend the LIS with the LIMS can be understood as an extension of this quest. The lesson from all of this is obvious. We now need to make an effort to understand the relative strengths of LIS and LIMS and proceed to develop new systems that capture the best features of each of them."

Every day there is a food recall of some kind. Whether it’s peanuts or spinach,  contamination can occur at any stage of production – from raw materials management, to storage and production processes, out-of-spec instrumentation and unsafe practices.  The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) will require food producers to monitor their processes and provide documentation for proper food safety and preventive controls that meet or exceed HACCP (Hazard Analysis  Critical Control Point) methods.  A laboratory information management system (LIMS) provides the data and process traceability that enables food producers to maintain safe processes and ensure quality control for their products, and respond to regulatory authorities with acceptable reporting documentation.

WEFTEC  has just  wrapped up its 2012 conference – the largest meeting of its kind in North America.  The Water Environment Federations’ annual meeting has again delivered comprehensive water quality education and training to thousands of water quality professionals.  The leading discussions at WEFTEC this year were centered  around emerging research and innovations in the industry.  These conversations addressed  global  concerns  –  from industrial issues, municipal wastewater treatment, and facility operations to watershed resources management and reclamation and reuse projects. Embedded within all of these topics is the issue of data, and what to do with it. A laboratory information management system (LIMS) is an essential part of the modern water testing laboratory and is more and more a critical consideration for lab and infrastructure investments in municipalities, utilities and contract laboratories of all sizes. With increasing requirements for testing of new contaminants as well as increasing demand, most water facilities still struggle with some form of paper based data management system.  The instruments in a water testing laboratory will continue to generate more and more data and now the question is, what systems will be put in place to manage that increased data load?  A LIMS is an essential tool for managing samples, for compiling data related to those samples, and for supporting quality and other laboratory processes.  A LIMS can also fully integrate all of the instruments in the lab so that data is efficiently captured, stored and then distributed to anyone who needs it.  By capturing water testing data in a centralized LIMS, water facilities managers can also have the assurance that their records will meet compliance requirements for any regulatory or governing body, be it the global ISO standards or the US-centric NELAC.

Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. exhibited its Next-Gen Mining portfolio during MINExpo 2012 in Las Vegas, September 24-26. The company’s highly integrated range of instruments, equipment and consumables, anchored by its industry-leading laboratory information management systems (LIMS), is the only offering that addresses all segments of the mining process, from early stage exploration through processing.

Your lab operations are an integral part of your business, and if you are responsible for keeping your laboratories current with today’s environment, then here’s a free, LIMS webinar that can help you ask the right questions of your LIMS providers.

I know – you were thinking that the reference to ‘time-share’ in this headline means I’m about to offer you a fantastic FREE gift for listening to my offer.  Not today...but it’s interesting that the concept of a ‘time-share’, specifically a LIMS time-share, has relevance to the scientific world as well as the resort industry.  A recent article written by Helen Gillespie, editor for the Informatics space at Technology Networks, explores the benefits of this ‘time-share’ concept at the Hong Kong Science & Technology Park, where labs are rented to a variety of start-up research companies and their access to a Laboratory Information Management System is shared and on-demand.

In the laboratory informatics world, we all have to stay current on the latest LIMS  and CDS, ELN and SDMS technologies so our contributions continue to make a direct impact on the value of the lab's efficiency and output. But even more these days, with the increasing pressure to reduce expenses and improve workflow efficiencies throughout the company, the contributions we make in the laboratory also extend all the way up to the corner office.  From data comes information, and the laboratory is delivering more and more information that becomes part of the business metrics used to make critical management decisions every day.  Informatics and LIMS user meetings give us the opportunity to connect with other professionals facing similar challenges and to interact directly with the industry solutions providers creating the next generation of LIMS and laboratory software.