testing in the pharmaceutical industry When it comes to the deployment of
solutions, discussions within the industry are increasingly turning to the topic of consolidation. Te cost of maintaining multiple systems can be significant, not just in terms of ownership, but with regards to the IT resources necessary for their administration, validation and support. Tere is no denying that the thought
of reviewing a technology infrastructure and embarking on a consolidation project can be daunting, however by focusing on one integrated platform, IT personnel can become proficient in its operation and potentially resolve any issues faster and with fewer complications. Individual companies owning and operating multiple LIMS and ELNs has been commonplace, but as industry figures such as LabWare’s Nick Townsend and Elliot Abreu can attest, pharmaceutical organisations are now moving away from that scenario and wishing to standardise their solutions. Trish Meek, director of product strategy
for life sciences at Termo Fisher Scientific, adds that companies that have invested in a LIMS, and possibly in an ELN as well, are increasingly re-evaluating their existing deployments in order to determine how to get the most from those investments. Te benefits of going down the road of standardisation may seem clear, but doing
Out on a LIMS?
LabWare’s Nick Townsend One of the biggest talking points in the industry at the moment is the role of ELNs used in collaboration with LIMS. LabWare’s Nick Townsend offers his view: ‘I recently attended a laboratory informatics
conference and when you’re at an event like that you talk to a lot of people trying to figure out the functional overlap between Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) and Electronic Laboratory Notebooks (ELNs), and what business value there is in adding an ELN to their labs’ existing LIMS system. Historically, LIMS has provided many benefits, including structure to the way data is managed and procedural control for laboratory workflows. ELN has brought other advantages such as a more free-form “experiment” environment for researchers and the capability to manage the execution of lab testing methods in QC environments. Laboratories that have implemented a LIMS may then consider adding an ELN in order to further automate the testing and achieve a truly paperless laboratory goal.’
10 SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD
so within a complex and research-based sector such as the pharmaceutical industry is never straightforward. Vendors are endeavouring to make this
easier through the release of platform solutions. LabWare’s Enterprise Laboratory Platform (ELP), for example, combines powerful LIMS and ELN products within the same application platform, fully integrated and bi-directionally communicating on multiple levels and actively synchronising the data between the two components. LabWare’s Nick Townsend points out that the ELP also provides a rich library of application modules that can be utilised by the LIMS and ELN. ‘Integration within a laboratory
environment has come a long way,’ says Trish Meek, from Termo Fisher Scientific. She explains that vendors are embracing technology like web services that better enable integration, but with a word of warning she adds that there remains a level of fear about the time and cost of integration projects. Tis is leading to labs prioritising the instruments they have several of and then leaving the rest out of the integration. Solutions like the Termo Fisher Scientific Integration Manager ease this process by transforming information from any number of instruments and lab equipment, or an enterprise system like an
ERP or data warehouse, directly into the LIMS and back out again. Having participated in a cross-industry
white paper recently published on the subject,[1]
Joel Usansky, senior product
manager at Termo Fisher Scientific, agrees that there is a definite need for better instrument interfacing, improved automation and integration in terms of data
IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS WE WILL GET TO THE POINT WHERE INFORMATICS WILL BE VIEWED MORE HOLISTICALLY
standards. He explains that each company that produces instruments has its own soſtware that controls and acquires data. Unfortunately that data is exported to the LIMS in a different format – in fact, an individual manufacturer can use multiple formats. Xyntek’s Elliot Abreu also believes that the lack of data standardising and definitions across the various platforms are compounding the technology integration challenges. Tere are steps being taken, however, towards a universal standard. ‘For large
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