L IMS: Enhanc Ed fE aturE S MakIng thE MoSt of
The past few years have seen some major business changes in the informatics industry. Siân harris looks at some of the effects such changes have on the market
‘I
nformatics systems can help laboratories improve operating efficiency through process standardisation, reduced labour costs
and increased capacity.’ So said global health care company Abbott in December 2009 as it announced its agreement to acquire the LIMS vendor Starlims and so increase its presence in the informatics industry. The purchase of Starlims, completed in
2010, followed on the heels of LabVantage’s acquisition of Life Technologies Corporation’s SQL*LIMS business. ‘Merging the LabVantage and SQL*LIMS teams together creates a global presence that is unparalleled in the industry,’ said Jim Aurelio, president and CEO of LabVantage at the time of the announcement. In 2011, LabVantage also bought Software Point, the company’s partner in Northern Europe, with offices in Finland, Sweden, and Norway. PerkinElmer has also been busy buying
up informatics companies. In May 2011 the company bought Labtronics, which provides electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) solutions for laboratories performing routine analysis in multiple industries. This acquisition followed PerkinElmer’s purchases of informatics companies CambridgeSoft and ArtusLabs, which were both announced in March. ‘The recent acquisitions extends
PerkinElmer’s ELN and data integration software offerings into laboratories, such as regulated and non-regulated QA/QC, late-stage product or method development laboratories, and environmental and food testing labs.
4
The combined offering allows PerkinElmer customers to access and share enterprise- wide data rapidly for faster, more informed scientific decisions,’ explains Clive Higgins, vice president of marketing for informatics at the company. ‘The ability to integrate scientific tools and informatics is becoming increasingly critical for our customers as they look to drive productivity and speed to market.’ Alongside such mergers and acquisitions
there have been plenty of further developments in the industry. These include financing deals – such as the recent $8 million investment in LIMS provider GenoLogics led by Illumina, a provider of next-generation sequencing (NGS) instruments – and new partnerships – such as ChemWare’s alliance with Healthpac Computer Systems to enhance the integration between the laboratory and its billing partners.
Wider changes The industries that informatics companies serve continue to evolve too, which leads to changes in the sector and informatics products. As Bruce Pharr, vice president, products
and marketing for GenoLogics Life Sciences Software observes: ‘GenoLogics is dealing with two interrelated trends that are having a significant impact on the DNA sequencing industry. First is the uncertainty over future government funding, and second is the introduction of desktop sequencers. Before the end of 2012 the total installed base of desktop instruments will surpass that of high- throughput instruments.’ These changes impact on GenoLogics’
LIMS products: ‘GenoLogics is working closely with NGS instrument manufacturers to extend and enhance the capabilities of our laboratory information management system (LIMS) software from leadership in basic research applications to pre-clinical and clinical applications,’ he says. ‘The race is on to move genetic sequencing from basic research to clinical applications and to deliver on the promise of molecular diagnostics and
conSoLIdatIon
therapeutics. This will require continued advancements in the sequencing instruments and the software that manages the information.’ The LIMS market in the pharmaceutical
sector has also been affected by changes in the industry it serves, according to Mark Harnois, director at Waters. In the case of the pharmaceutical industry, the trend over recent years has been towards consolidation, resulting in a number of very large enterprises and fewer medium-size organisations, he explains. ‘The laboratory informatics business
has largely benefited from the merger and acquisition environment, because enterprise deployable informatics solutions allow larger organisations to improve efficiency and reduce costs,’ he comments. ‘For example, one chromatography data
system (CDS) can be deployed across a global organisation where previously there may have been two to three systems in place.’ He observed that such trends bring advantages with more efficient chromatography workflows, better collaboration, reduced training and validation effort, and lower maintenance overheads. In addition, he continues, ‘another key advantage of consolidating on a CDS and scientific data management system (SDMS) is that system integration becomes simpler from system to system.’ For those smaller companies left, however,
the informatics challenges remain the same, he adds: ‘A challenge for laboratory informatics businesses is that smaller organisations, focused on niche drug development (the business incubators) lack sufficient funding to equip their laboratories adequately with instrumentation and software.’ Clive Higgins of PerkinElmer has observed
a similar trend in customers: ‘We are aware that our customers have been going through a consolidation process of vendors, the numbers of systems used and the architecture that they need to support, because of the costs associated. They would like to have fewer, but much deeper relationships with their vendors.
L IMS : a changIng L and S c a p E
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36