Implementing a LIMS is a complex process that must align with current and future business needs. Careful planning, expertise across a wide range of technologies and disciplines, and a strategic distribution of resources are critical to ensuring a successful deployment.

Key Factors to Consider When Choosing a LIMS Implementation Partner

When it comes to implementing a LIMS, having expertise beyond the vendor’s standard offerings can be extremely beneficial. Since LIMS functionality spans numerous aspects of lab workflows and associated instrumentation, its deployment goes beyond the software. This process includes integrating and enabling unilateral and bilateral communication with various lab instruments, systems, and applications. Additionally, it often involves migrating data from other legacy LIMS or consolidating data from multiple sources.

Professional Service Organizations (PSOs), like Astrix, specializing in lab informatics, provide end-to-end solutions tailored for science-based businesses. Their expert consultants leverage extensive experience and proven methodologies to deliver vendor-agnostic strategies and customized configurations aligned with industry standards. These areas of expertise include:

• Comprehensive Scientific and Business Knowledge: Enables the analysis of business processes to thoroughly understand lab operations, instruments, and compliance regulations, ensuring that LIMS functionality is optimized to meet the specific needs of your lab.
• Lab-Wide Expertise: Diverse team of readily available specialists skilled in the latest technologies, applications, and security protocols.
• Unbiased Recommendations: Benefit from vendor-neutral strategies, recommendations, and configurations based on industry standards.
• Lab Informatics Strategy and Roadmap: Development of scalable, integrated, and automated solutions to maximize the efficiency of your LIMS deployment and transform lab operations.
• Industry Best Practices: Utilize experience with proven industry techniques and hands-on expertise with leading LIMS vendor platforms and Computer System Validation.
• Data Migration and Centralization: Expert consultants who specialize in data extraction, transformation, and security across a wide array of software applications and lab systems enable a holistic approach that streamlines your data migration process, reducing risk and enhancing efficiency.

Expert Professional Service Organizations deliver vendor-neutral strategies and customized configurations, providing comprehensive solutions through business process analysis to ensure the optimal LIMS deployment for your lab.

Cost-savings Through Reduced Downtime

The success of any LIMS implementation project hinges upon effective planning and budgeting, balancing costs without sacrificing quality. One of the most substantial cost-saving aspects of engaging an expert PSO is reducing downtime. Experienced professionals can implement LIMS quickly and correctly the first time, minimizing disruptions to your lab’s workflow. Reduced downtime means maintaining lab productivity and avoiding hidden costs associated with prolonged implementation periods.

By ensuring that the system is implemented correctly and efficiently from the start, you avoid the additional costs of correcting mistakes later on. A well-implemented LIMS enhances data accuracy, compliance, and overall operational efficiency, leading to long-term savings and a higher return on investment (ROI).

In Summary

Expert Professional Service Organizations bring a wealth of experience across various industries, enabling them to quickly identify and implement best practices. Their familiarity with LIMS software and implementation strategies can significantly reduce the time and resources needed to get your system up and running efficiently. Unlike vendor service teams and in-house teams that may have limited experience with different lab systems, Expert PSOs offer a broader perspective and innovative solutions. This flexibility allows for a more adaptable and scalable system that can grow with your lab’s changing demands.

Engaging a cost-effective Expert PSO for a LIMS implementation offers numerous advantages, from significant cost savings and reduced downtime to tailored solutions and long-term financial benefits. Expert PSOs can streamline the LIMS implementation process, ensuring your lab runs smoothly while keeping financial constraints in check. You can avoid common pitfalls and maximize your investment by leveraging their expertise, efficiency, and comprehensive support.

About Astrix

Astrix is the unrivaled market leader in creating & delivering innovative strategies, technology solutions, and people to the life science community. We are a globally recognized leading LIMS Implementation Partner. Through world-class people, process, and technology, Astrix works with clients to fundamentally improve business, scientific, and medical outcomes and the quality of life everywhere. Founded by scientists to solve the unique challenges of the life science community, Astrix offers a growing array of fully integrated services designed to deliver value to clients across their organizations. To learn the latest about how Astrix is transforming the way science-based businesses succeed today, visit www.astrixinc.com.

The post Why Choosing an Expert LIMS Implementation Partner is a Smart Decision appeared first on Astrix.

SampleManager LIMS is continuously upgraded to meet the changing needs of laboratories across all industries – pharmaceutical QA/QC, food and beverage, oil and gas, petrochemical, water and environmental, manufacturing, contract labs, and more. Each new release of SampleManager contains new functionality that is built upon feedback and customer input from these sectors, and this ensures an upgrade path that respects your previous investment while allowing you to take advantage of collected industry knowledge to respond to changing business or regulatory demands.

SampleManager LIMS offers the potential for significant operational and business benefits for your organization. There are, however, important considerations to take into account when implementing or upgrading the SampleManager solution in order to realize its full potential to transform your laboratory operations, improve organizational agility, and unlock the power of your laboratory data. In this blog, we’ll discuss key best practice recommendations to follow during your SampleManager implementation or upgrade that will ensure your project maximizes success in ensuring compliance, streamlining processes, improving quality, reducing costs, and driving productivity and innovation in your laboratory environment.

Tips for Optimizing SampleManager LIMS Implementations and Upgrades

The following best practices are recommended when undertaking a SampleManager LIMS upgrade or implementation:

Make the Most of the “Out-Of-The-Box” Features of SampleManager: SampleManager has a wide variety of system configuration features that can likely meet the needs of your laboratory today and into the future. SampleManager (SM) version 11 specifically features several advanced new tools and user-interface enhancements that serve to improve laboratory management, process mapping and automation. Best practice is to examine and understand all these features, and utilize as many of them as you can in your implementation to meet your requirements and simplify implementation. Some examples include:

• Workflow and Lifecycles (SM 11): SampleManager’s unique workflow capabilities are designed to empower lab users and managers by allowing them to easily build workflows that map to actual laboratory processes and make choices about instrument integration and reporting for regulatory requirements or management metrics. Workflow features allow laboratory users and managers to perform specific actions and/or designate statuses for any dynamic or static data, create elaborate decision trees, automate email and reporting. As laboratory needs evolve, workflows can be modified to mirror the new process.
• Report, Label and Form Designer (SM 10): Allows laboratory users and managers to create custom reports and labels, filters and folders for organizing data, and new database fields. Also allows users to change or create new forms that enable setting the data as desired.
• Inventory Tracking: SM has the ability to track almost any commodity, stock, or standard solution to let users know where inventory comes from, where it is used, and when it expires.
• Instrument Calibration and Training Tracking: SM can do the work of tracking training and instrument calibrations for you. The software has the ability to alert users if training is out of date or an instrument is out of calibration.

Avoid Customizations Unless They Are Really Required: Astrix SM experts have experienced several implementations where extensive customizations to satisfy requirements have dramatically extended project duration. Writing new or changing existing code in VGL (SM proprietary language) or ,NET, besides making the project more expensive and time-consuming, can increase the complexity of future maintenance/migration/validation, and potentially lead to system errors. SM comes with a lot of configurable items that can usually be adjusted to meet the lab’s requirements without the need for customization.

Designate Appropriate Internal and External Resources for Project Implementation: In addition to making a good decision regarding which external informatics consultant to work with on a SM project, it is crucial for organizations to assign motivated and skilled internal resources to a SM implementation or upgrade. Significant collaboration between quality external and internal resources is required for the success of any SM project. Collaboration must occur to determine project requirements, as well as configure static data, templates and data analysis.

Make sure you plan on designated internal resources spending time on the project, which means they will be less available for their day jobs. The best external consultants can help you backfill your laboratory staff for the duration of the project so that it does not disrupt productivity in the laboratory. Note that internal staff assigned to the project team will develop a lot of SM knowledge and turn into internal “LIMS Admins”.

Iterate Your Implementation: Given the extensive configurability of SM, users often don’t know exactly what is possible or how SM works, so it’s wise to implement SM in stages, with the first iteration being the minimum viable solution to go into production with. Be reasonable and don’t try to achieve everything on the first project iteration. After users get to experience the first version, they can suggest changes and adjustments that they want to see for the next iteration. This iterative approach both shortens the time it takes for internal staff to start using the system and avoids frustrating expectations early in the project.

Iterating your implementation also makes any future upgrades/updates necessitated by a changing environment (regulations, data integrity, new users, etc.) easier due to:

• Already have internal SMEs to help define a wish list and possible project pat
• Validation of core functions is already completed

When Appropriate, Use Virtual fields (SM 10 and later versions) Instead of Actually Creating Fields in the Database: Virtual fields are not stored in a database and can include any calculation allowed by .NET code – text aggregation, sum of amounts, reporting fields, timeline planning for samples, etc. In addition to allowing much more flexibility, virtual fields avoid creating unnecessary database overhead.

Create Good Project Documentation: For regulatory and future maintenance requirements, the owners of the SM system need to document all the relevant changes to the system after the project ends – database fields created, code created or modified, integrations and interfaces, workflows configured, etc. Working with a quality external informatics consultant makes this easy, as they will provide the documentation for you. Documentation provided by Astrix on SM projects includes:

• Project Plan – responsibilities, communication plan, work schedule, etc.
• Requirements Traceability Matrix – requirements description, categorization (standard/configuration/customization), design ideas, prioritization.
• Functional/Design Specification – relevant technical changes to the system and/or system architecture.
• Testing Documentation – IQ/OQ/PQ scripts or protocols for validation (required for regulated laboratories). Note that whether the laboratory is in a regulated environment or not, Astrix always does system validation.

The Astrix Difference

The Astrix Team contains some of the most experienced and knowledgeable SampleManager experts in the world. Our team has proven expertise in project management, implementation, integration, validation and system optimization for SampleManager LIMS across all industries. Our accomplished consultants also have a wealth of experience across various organization types, helping to ensure that business-specific needs, along with industry and regulatory requirements, are taken into consideration on your project.

As your laboratory needs evolve due to regulatory or business changes, it is often necessary to begin to utilize new features of SM that have not been previously used, or upgrade to a new version that has the functionality to fulfill your changing requirements. Whether you need to implement SampleManager LIMS as a new system, optimize or adjust your current implementation, or upgrade to a new version, Astrix can help ensure that any new configuration or customization of SM is accomplished in the most efficient, cost-effective and timely way that satisfies your present and future requirements.

Let us help you with:

• Strategic planning to make sure that your implementation/upgrade project satisfies production, operational and financial goals.
• SampleManager LIMS configuration or customization
• Instrument integration with SampleManager LIMS
• Computer system (e.g., laboratory, business and manufacturing system) integration with SampleManager LIMS
• Data migration from legacy systems to SampleManager LIMS
• SampleManager LIMS training for key personnel
• SampleManager LIMS validation services
• Scientific and Technical Staffing Services to backfill laboratory staff so that your SM project does not disrupt operations.

If you would like to learn more about these services, please feel free to contact us for a no obligation consultation using the link below:

Conclusion
From smaller individual lab deployments through global multi-site implementations, SampleManager LIMS has the ability to meet your laboratory needs in a single application. While the potential for this system to help increase productivity and innovation in your laboratory environment is great, it is important to work with a quality laboratory informatics consultant who has the necessary experience with SampleManager in order to realize its full potential.

The post Tips for SampleManager Implementation and Upgrades appeared first on Astrix.

IT projects are notorious for failure – a recent survey by cloud portfolio management provider Innotas revealed that over 50 percent of businesses surveyed had experienced an IT project failure within the previous 12 months. LIMS projects can be especially challenging, given the many different aspects of the enterprise that modern LIMS touch.

With the stakes being so high, how can you set your organization up for success from the beginning?  Let’s start by exploring the most common reasons why LIMS project fail in the first place.

LIMS Selection Implementation Failures

LIMS projects require large investments of money, resources and time – costing anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, and requiring hundreds of hours to implement. And while a successful LIMS implementation can help your organization streamline workflows, cut costs, improve quality and compliance, a poorly planned and implemented LIMS can be devastating to an organization.

There are a number of different metrics that can apply in the case of a failed LIMS project:

• Implemented without all of the required functionality
• Project did not meet the targeted goals and objectives
• Grossly missed timeline and budget
• Project was cancelled

Some of the most common reasons why LIMS projects fail are:

• Insufficient resources
• “Bloated” or misaligned scope
• Poor project management
• The wrong LIMS was selected for the organization

The last reason in particular is unfortunately quite common in our experience. Let’s explore the top five LIMS selection mistakes that organizations make in more detail.

LIMS Selection Mistakes

Mistake #1: Buying solely on a recommendation. Lab or IT managers will often purchase a LIMS based on a colleague or a friend within the company saying they “liked” a particular system, or that it is a “good” LIMS. The outcome of following these kind of qualitative assessments is that you end up buying something that works for your friend, but will likely not meet your specific requirements.

In order to avoid this issue, it is important to establish a LIMS evaluation process that is focused on your organization and its specific requirements. Towards this end, you should:

• Establish your goals and objective for the LIMS project
• Evaluate current laboratory processes
• Document your requirements
• Develop a LIMS evaluation plan
• Seek assistance from an outside contractor with LIMS expertise

Mistake #2: Beginning with insufficient budget. Companies often budget for their LIMS project before they have fully documented their requirements. This can lead to a situation where the project ends up being constrained by an arbitrary number that does not allow for goals and objectives to be met, with decisions centered around cost instead of requirements:

• the lowest cost system is selected
• the scope of the project is cut – testing and training are scaled back, for example
• the implementation effort gets placed in the lap of the lab manager and shadow IT

In order to avoid this mistake, companies should perform a business case analysis to set the budget for the LIMS project:

• Define goals and objectives
• Describe the project’s benefits to the organization
• Develop accurate costs – both external and internal
• Describe how the LIMS will drive value
• Utilize a Value Engineering approach – align with company KPI’s
• Seek assistance from an outside contractor who has the ability to help you integrate your LIMS project into business processes

Mistake #3: Dictate timeline to the vendor. Telling the vendor when the project must be complete leads companies to work backwards when developing the project plan, placing “artificial” dates on project tasks. This creates the perception that the project is failing, as the project team ends up trying to manage a contrived timeline that was not well thought out. Inevitably, this approach necessitates a project re-boot somewhere down the road, as the project team is forced to create a more realistic timeline, or even choose a different LIMS.

In order to avoid this mistake, you need to establish a collaborative relationship with the vendor:

• Provide a detailed project scope to vendor
• Ask the vendor to provide the project timeline
• Align scope with timeline
• Seek assistance from an outside contractor who can help you determine the project scope and timeline

Mistake #4: Select a LIMS solely on the current state of the organization. Companies often make the mistake of choosing a LIMS based on a current “snapshot” of the organization, ignoring future technology enhancements or business needs. This kind of approach effectively negates the whole point of purchasing a new LIMS in the first place by trying to force the new LIMS into the mold of the legacy LIMS or a paper-based process. The result is that you end up purchasing and implementing a LIMS with limited lifespan, or worse – you end up simply repeating your previous LIMS selection and implementation project.

In order to avoid this mistake, you must create a strategic LIMS roadmap (AKA Phase “0”).

• Document current state
• Define future state
• Get input from entire organization – IT, Management, Customers
• Seek assistance from an outside contractor that can help you create a strategic LIMS roadmap

Mistake #5: Select a LIMS based on features rather than requirements. Companies will often base a LIMS decision based solely on the vendor demonstration, allowing “bells and whistles” to drive the decision, while ignoring the “boring” but important items. This leads to gaps between capabilities and requirements being discovered during implementation, and ultimately results in a highly compromised and unsatisfactory implementation.

In order to avoid this mistake, you must perform a proper LIMS requirements phase:

• Establish stakeholder groups
• Allow the establishment of requirements to be an iterative process
• Evaluate all requirements – functional, technical, business, etc.
• Seek assistance from an outside contractor who can help you properly identify your system requirements.

Case Study

As an example of what not to do, consider the case of a clinical diagnostic company that tried to implement a LIMS on their own. The company developed a budget for the project prior to doing a thorough evaluation of project requirements, goals and objectives (Mistake #2). With this budget in mind, the lab manager received a LIMS recommendation from a colleague (Mistake #1), and set up a demo from this vendor. After being impressed with the demonstration (Mistake #5), this vendor’s LIMS was selected and the project moved forward.

Given these mistakes, it was not surprising that the company struggled with the LIMS implementation. The system ended up being implemented in only 1 in 4 labs, and was replaced within 24 months with support from Astrix.

Conclusion

LIMS projects are a serious undertaking, requiring a large investment of money, time and resources. One of the most important aspects of a successful LIMS project is selecting the right LIMS to install. Unfortunately, this is an area where, for a variety of reasons, many companies fail to make the right decision. Given the complexity of modern LIMS projects, it is wise to enlist the support of a quality laboratory informatics consultant like Astrix in order to ensure that you select the right LIMS. With over 20 years’ experience in laboratory informatics, and scientific domain knowledge across hundreds of different platforms, Astrix will support the overall success of your project by helping you:

• assess the current state of your informatics systems and define the future state
• create the business case for your project
• properly define your system requirement’s
• use a methodology that will guarantee you select the propoer LIMS
• develop the proper plan to implement and integrate your LIMS project across the enterprise

The post How to Avoid the Top 5 Most Common Mistakes in LIMS Selection appeared first on Astrix.

While LabWare’s ELP offers both functionality and business benefits significantly beyond what is provided by a conventional LIMS or ELN, there are important considerations to take into account when implementing or upgrading the LabWare solution in order to realize its full potential to transform your laboratory operations. In this blog, we’ll discuss key best practice recommendations to follow during your LabWare implementation or upgrade that will help to ensure your project is successful in optimizing compliance, improving quality, reducing costs, and increasing productivity and innovation in your laboratory environment.

Tips for Optimizing LabWare Implementations or Upgrades

Some important considerations to take into account when implementing or upgrading LabWare’s Enterprise Laboratory Platform (ELP) include:

Make Good Architecture Decisions. When designing your LabWare system architecture, it is wise to use as much of the standard configuration as possible, which means getting the best Templates that will suit your business, and trying to use as many of the available modules as possible to avoid a lot of customizations. There are a number of reasons for this:

• Using LIMS Basic (LabWare programming language used for customizations) instead of standard functionalities means that LabWare will need to compile your customizations in real-time, resulting in a loss of performance.
• The more customizations you have, the more complex future upgrades will be.
• The more customizations you have, the more difficult it will be for your IT support to solve an issue when problems arise.

Iterate Your Implementation. The LabWare platform is extremely flexible and can be configured and customized to automate virtually any laboratory operation. However, just because you can do something does not mean it is cost or time effective to do so. It is prudent to implement LabWare in stages, with the first iteration being the minimum viable solution to go into production with. Once this minimum solution is operational, users can provide feedback as to the pain points that they are experiencing, and then decisions can be made as to whether it makes sense from a financial and time perspective to customize the system to provide further automation.

Have a Master Data Management Strategy. Having a data management strategy is often an afterthought in an informatics project. Data management for any informatics implementation almost always turns out to be a much bigger task than one might have imagined, especially for those projects that involve replacing a legacy system. As much of LabWare’s functionality is data and template driven, neglecting to formulate a Master Data Management Strategy at the beginning of the project can lead to significant time and cost overruns as the project proceeds. As such, it is important to make sure that you do the work necessary to understand and plan for your static data requirements at the beginning of your LabWare project. Questions to ask include: How are we going to get data out of the legacy system and into LabWare? How are we going to harmonize data across multiple sites?

Understand User Roles and Security Permissions. LabWare has a multi-layered security framework built into the system. To fully utilize this feature, it is important to fully detail the desired user roles and the permissions associated with each role before you build the system. As with managing the static data aspects of the project, designing and implementing user permission layers can be a bigger task than expected. Waiting until the end of the project to implement a security framework is a recipe for cost and time overruns.

Don’t Go Overboard With Instrument Integration. LabWare offers several different ways to integrate instruments into the system.

• Configuring Labware to monitor and process database tables created by an external instrument.
• Web services
• XML data mapped to specific fields in Labware, or to an XSD provided by external applications. LabWare now supports the AniML XML standard for analytical chemistry data, allowing LabWare to more easily bring in data from various sources.
• Direct connection via RS-232 ports.
• Modules that support various complex laboratory instrument systems like Empower CDS.

With all these integration options, it is certainly possible to get bogged down in trying to integrate too much too soon. Some instrument integrations can be challenging and cause project delays. It is important to have a master plan that details what instruments are to be integrated and when.

Have a System Map That Details All the Templates and Modules in Use. Modules in LabWare are enhancements that are incorporated into the main application using its core language (Small Talk). These modules can be downloaded from the LabWare website and installed with the main application to achieve a new feature. It is quite common for complex LabWare implementations to have a large number of modules installed. When a customer downloads a new module that has been developed by the Labware team, it may cause some problems in other modules that they are using. This issue usually occurs in a new implementation, when adding new features into an existing implementation or when upgrading the core system version. Its therefore important to have a map of all the modules installed in your server and clients, as well as the industry template being used, so that the support team will have all the information they need to recreate the customer’s installation in a sandbox where they will try to reproduce the error.

Only People with the Correct Skills Should Program Customizations. Anyone who has taken the LIMS Basic (LabWare programing language for customization) training can start developing their codes to customize LabWare. However, there are some risks when you do not have the right people doing the work. In the past, many common mistakes made in LIMS Basic programing (e.g. not using quotation marks with a string definition) were skipped by the compiler and fixed during execution time. The compiler is in constant development by LabWare, however. LabWare 7 removed much of these automatic fixing to increase the performance of the system, resulting in a big problem for many companies when trying to upgrade.

Astrix provides a complete solution for LabWare Implementation and  Platform Upgrades.

Conclusion

LabWare’s ELP, which combines the functionality of LIMS and Electronic Laboratory Notebook into a single integrated solution, is unique in the informatics industry. This system offers the ability to automate virtually any laboratory workflow. While the potential for this system to help increase productivity and innovation in your laboratory environment is great, it is important to work with a quality laboratory informatics consultant who has the necessary experience with LabWare in order to realize its full potential.

About Astrix

Astrix  is an informatics consulting, professional services and staffing company dedicated to servicing the scientific community for over 20 years.  We shape our clients’ future, combining deep scientific insight with the understanding of how technology and people will impact the scientific industries. Our focus on issues related to value engineered solutions, on demand resource and domain requirements, flexible and scalable operating and business models helps our clients find future value and growth in scientific domains. Whether focused on strategies for Laboratories, IT or Staffing, Astrix has the people, skills and experience to effectively shape client value. We offer highly objective points of view on Enterprise Informatics, Laboratory Operations, Healthcare IT and Scientific Staffing with an emphasis on business and technology, leveraging our deep industry experience.

The post Six Tips to Optimize Your LabWare Implementation and Upgrades appeared first on Astrix.

Technological advances in laboratory instrumentation, along with higher throughput processes, have led to massive increases in the volume of analytical data. One of the main challenges faced by organizations today is turning this vast amount of data into useful information that fuels innovation and enables timely and effective business decisions. In order to manage and process these growing data volumes effectively, laboratories are looking to automate and integrate laboratory operations and processes as much as possible.

Towards this end, integration of laboratory instruments with a LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) automates laboratory processes and drives operational efficiency by reducing data transcription errors and increasing sample throughput. Instrument integration with LIMS also serves to increase job satisfaction by reducing tedious tasks like manual data entry and writing of results, allowing scientists to spend more time doing the science that leads to innovation. Connecting the information generated by instruments and informatics systems is a key to transforming your laboratory operations, improving product quality, and turning your data into knowledge.

Instruments that are commonly integrated with LIMS in laboratories include:

• GC
• GCMS
• HPLC
• LCMS
• ICP
• Particle Counters
• DNA Sequencers
• Balances
• Titrators
• AA Analyzers

The latest versions of SampleManager LIMS provides a number of effective mechanisms to accomplish instrument integration. In this blog, we will discuss some best practice recommendations when integrating laboratory instruments with SampleManager LIMS in order to ensure that your enterprise maximizes success in ensuring compliance, streamlining processes, improving quality, reducing costs, and driving productivity and innovation in your laboratory environment.

Instrument Integration Tips

Triage which instruments are worth integrating

Before you invest the time and effort to integrate an instrument with SampleManager LIMS, it is important to consider the cost/benefit ratio involved. Implementing an instrument integration can be a time-consuming task – anywhere from a few hours to a several days – so it is advisable to determine if the ROI makes the instrument integration worth pursuing. Some of the factors involved in this analysis are:

• How frequently is the instrument used and what quantity of results will it export?
• How critical are the instrument’s results for laboratory processes?
• Can the instrument’s PC be easily connected to the network so the instrument can be integrated with the LIMS?

For this last point, it is important to consider operating system actualization, network compliance issues such as company IT policies, and the complexity of the data being exported by the instrument.

Go for the Low-Hanging Fruit First

Once you have your list of instruments that make sense to integrate, you’ll want to go for the low-hanging fruit first in order to build project morale and momentum. This means integrating critical path instruments first – those that are relatively straightforward to integrate, high throughput, and add a lot of value to the business.

Laboratories often want instruments such as balances to be integrated due the fact that they are critical to their processes. Balances can be problematic, however, due to a number of factors such as age, connectivity and logistics. An instrument like a GC or HPLC with high throughput and compatible software would probably be a better choice to place at the top of your integration list. Working with a quality informatics consultant that can help you develop an effective roadmap and outline a realistic amount of scope for your project is very important.

Standardize Export Formats

The data exported by instruments either have a fixed format, or can be formatted as the operator desires using exporting templates defined on the instrument software. For this latter case, it is important to configure an export format that is both flexible (allowing all possible instrument methods to work and be imported into the LIMS) and fixed (it does not vary for different methods or different instrument runs). The day-to-day instrument operators should not have the ability to change the export templates. If a different export template is used, parsing scripts developed for the instrument will need to be adjusted to keep it working properly.

SampleManager LIMS Instrument Integration Options

Once the decision is made to integrate an instrument with SampleManager LIMS, the integration method needs to be determined. There are several different ways to integrate instruments with SampleManager LIMS which we will describe below.

Serial/RS-232 interface

The functionality required to integrate serial instruments with SampleManager (e.g. balances, pH meters) is built within the system. These instruments usually require a physical cable connection between the instrumentation and the workstation running SampleManager. The COM port parameters can be defined within SampleManager for the instruments.

Different setups/hardware options (Serial Device Servers) can be explored if multiple instruments need to be connected through this serial interface to the same SampleManager workstations; or to make the same instrument available to different SampleManager workstations through the network. Some VGL customization is required for this setup.

Instrument Manager

Also known as SM-IM, or the “SampleManager Instrument Manager” module. The SM-IM module allows SampleManager to read result files from instruments. Virtually any instrument that is networked and can produce a result export in a file format can be integrated with SampleManager using this module.

The SM-IM module utilizes parsing scripts (to parse the important information from a result file), mapping scripts (to map the parsed data to SampleManager entities) and an alias table (to map specific entries between the instrument and SampleManager, like name of analysis methods and results). Each instrument to be integrated will have a parsing script, mapping script and an alias table defined on the SM-IM module. The instrument is then configured to export files to a specific network folder, where SM-IM interface will process the files and send the results to SampleManager (through LIMSML).

This SM-IM module is easy to use and configure. The main limitation is that it is a unidirectional interface, so it won’t allow SampleManager to send data to the instrument (such as list of samples to be analyzed).

New SM12.1 LES Instrument Integration (“New” SM-IM)

Together with the SampleManager LES functionality (standard on SM12.1), Instrument and Workflow functionality were extended to support manual Instrument Integration that is compatible with the SM12+ web client. The Instrument Entity has a tab for configuring Integration properties, which includes the ability to specify a Data Source for the integration.  Data sources can be:

• Emulated
• Serial Port
• Directory
• Web Request
• File Prompt

Parsing scripts and Alias table can be defined within SampleManager for the LES Instrument Integration.

Once the test is assigned to an instrument on the SampleManager result entry screen, the system will allow results to be imported based on the Serial/Data Source configuration defined for the instrument. This is a unidirectional (Instrument  SampleManager)  instrument interface mechanism.

The SampleManager Workflow Entity was also extended and has new nodes to streamline instrument integration.

Integration Manager

Integration Manager is a stand-alone Thermo Fisher application/product that allows for bi-directional integration with instruments, services or third-party applications using the concept of integration points. When utilized for instrument integration, Integration Manager can be configured to send SampleManager information to the instrument (usually the list of samples and some sample properties), and to retrieve results back from the instrument (usually exported to files on a network folder). More complex setups with multiple interfaces and multiple integration points can also be used to address very complex integration scenarios.

Integration Manager is a stand-alone product with its own license, user interface and database objects that is designed to work with many different systems, not just SampleManager. Integration Manager acts like a translator of different languages from disparate data sources, accepting and delivering data in the format appropriate to each intended recipient.

When used specifically for SampleManager instrument integration, Integration Manager allows the creation of transformations (similar to parsing and mapping scripts) and alias tables and makes available ‘File Agents’ and ‘SampleManager’ agents to complete the integration.

Chromeleon Link

Specific functionality to integrate SampleManager with Chromeleon (a CDS from Thermo Fisher Scientific) was released with SM 11 and is being continuously enhanced on service releases and newer versions of SampleManager (12 and 12.1).

This interface allows bidirectional communication between SampleManager and Chromeleon, where:

• SampleManager can send Sequence List to the Chromeleon instrument.
• SampleManager can import the Sequence information and results seamlessly from the Chromeleon instrument.
• Chromeleon software can search for Sequence information directly on the SampleManager system (through Batches and Standards Configuration on SampleManager) using Chromeleon e-Workflow wizard.

Custom Instrument Integration

Customers sometimes choose to customize their instrument interfaces (bi-directional from SampleManager –>Instrument and from Instrument –> SampleManager) and do not use any of the tools available from Thermo Fisher. While this allows flexibility, like any other customized solution, it is not sustainable for a long-term strategy and will require a lot of attention as SampleManager evolves and upgrades take place. Usually maintenance costs of custom solutions are very high, so all other options should be exhausted before going down this path.

Conclusion

Whether you have old instruments that were not integrated with SampleManager during your initial implementation, or new instruments that have come online since, a SampleManager upgrade (or a new implementation) is a convenient time to integrate instruments with the system. Effective instrument integration is crucial to improving your organization’s IP protection and SampleManager adoption and utilization rates, and a key factor in enhancing productivity, efficiency, data integrity and innovation in your laboratory environment. Automating your laboratory environment through effective instrument integration, however, is best accomplished through a close partnership with a quality informatics consultant. As a long-standing Thermo Fisher Scientific’s services partner, Astrix is uniquely positioned to help you optimize your SampleManager LIMS implementation and instrument integrations.

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