LABORATORY INFORMATICS GUIDE 2014 | INFORMATICS


Tom Tobin, LIMS administration head, and Graham O’Halloran, technical manager at Advanced Laboratory Testing, Ireland.


A


dvanced Laboratory Testing Ltd (ALT) is a fully Irish-owned contract testing laboratory


established in February 2013 to provide microbiology and chemistry testing services to the food industry in Ireland. The laboratory complies with ISO/IEC 17025:2005 for all analyses, offering customised solutions for testing raw and cooked foods, and water samples. ALT carries out microbiology testing of


cooked and raw food, and water samples in three separate laboratories at its site in Newbridge, Co. Kildare. Food chemistry testing is outsourced to the firm’s partners, so an installed LIMS also has to be able to track outsourced samples, and manage data coming back into the system from outside sources. During 2013, ALT installed LabWare’s


Enterprise Laboratory Platform LIMS, underpinned by the LabWare Contract Template Solution, which is ideally suited to the requirements of the Irish firm, explains Tom Tobin, who heads ALT’s LIMS administration. ‘We looked at the flow of samples through the lab, right from the point of sample receipt and entry into the system, through to reporting and invoicing, to see what our requirements were at every stage’. From our perspective, a LIMS had to be capable of allowing the processing of high volumes of samples, with the stringency to enable the highest levels of


Microbiology work at Advanced Laboratory Testing


quality management,’ comments Graham O’Halloran, ALT’s technical manager. One of the primary requirements of the


contract food-testing sector is speed of turnaround and reporting to clients, Tobin continues. ‘LabWare’s Contract Template Solution has been designed around the needs of the contract-testing sector, and could be configured to our specific requirements, which are primarily centred on the need to manage sample volumes, enable sample throughput, and host a


ALT is currently expanding to provide further on site testing for the


environmental, food, and potentially pharmaceutical sectors


regulatory compliant, fully transparent audit trail. We were able to strip down the number of steps it took to book samples in to our laboratory, barcode them and assign each sample to the relevant laboratory, with a specific suite of tests, so that delays at each stage were minimised,’ adds Graham O’Halloran. ALT also uses the LabWare LIMS to carry


out results calculations, which are checked against specifications and highlighted and reported if a specification limit is exceeded. LIMS then produces the certificate of analysis, which is reviewed and approved before being sent out by the LIMS to the customer. ALT is currently expanding to provide


Sample intake at Advanced Laboratory Testing 18 | www.scientific-computing.com/lig2014


further on site testing for the environmental, food, and potentially pharmaceutical sectors. ‘The flexibility of the LabWare LIMS, and the ability to add in additional modules configured to our requirements, will hopefully satisfy the informatics requirements associated with our growth and diversification,’ Tobin states.


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