I
ew
LIMS stretches
LIMS overv beyond the lab
LIMS vendors and their
manage the data that these instruments quality control in the production process.
collect. This has been a challenge because Integration in the processes helps to ensure
customers are interested
of proprietary interfaces and different traceability.
in integration. Siân Harris
data formats. ‘Historically, an instrument Daniela Jansen, informatics marketing and
finds out why
provider might not have been very open business support manager Europe for Waters,
but that is not really the case anymore,’ says: ‘Customers want to be able to extract
says Dave Leitham, director of products for information from raw data. Keeping data in
I
ntegration is a popular word with vendors the informatics division of Thermo Fisher a long-term format such as PDF or JCAMP
of laboratory information management Scientific. ‘Standards have helped but there is gives customers the reassurance that it will
systems (LIMS). Companies in this area still a long way to go there.’ still be readable. With the human-readable
say that this is a key requirement for their In addition, a single lab with its public standard JCAMP format, or its
customers. As Clive Baron, chief business instruments and a LIMS is rarely the successor AnIML, which is due to be released
development officer of Starlims points out, only thing going on in a company. Take a in 2009, it is possible to manipulate data and
‘a LIMS doesn’t work in isolation within the pharmaceutical company, for example. There to re-evaluate it, which is why we consider
laboratory informatics environment.’ are a range of different labs and processes this format so important.’
A LIMS must be able to communicate from the early-stage discovery of potential What’s more, if a company’s lab processes
with the laboratory instruments or it cannot compounds through to the clinical trials and are integrated then it is easier for managers
to spot where there are bottlenecks. This
is an important requirement as companies
increasingly turn to less highly-skilled staff,
but want to bring drugs to market more
quickly. ‘If a pharmaceutical company knows
that it is taking 18 months from target to hit,
it needs to improve this. To do so, they need
to measure the processes,’ says Andy Vines,
product manager of ActivityBase for IDBS.
Ron Kasner, vice president of corporate
development at LabVantage Solutions,
agrees: ‘By providing real-time data
integration, reporting, analytics, and data
visualisation, LIMS can provide effective
business insights for operational intelligence.’
Pharmaceutical companies and other
LIMS customers also have other systems and
they want to make sure that these systems
talk to each other too. Common requests
are for LIMS to be able to interoperate with
electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs),
chromatography data software (CDS),
scientific data management system (SDMS)
PRA International, a large contract research
and enterprise resource planning (ERP).
organisation (CRO), is a Thermo Scientific Watson
LIMS user. CROs need to be fully integrated with
‘Customers increasingly want to stretch the
their pharmaceutical sponsors for seamless
LIMS beyond what it traditionally did. They
4
transference of data and communication.
are looking for integrated workflows across
LIG09 pp04-07 LIMS Overview.indd 4 9/12/08 17:08:50
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