Yet making the transition to an integrated laboratory ecosystem, along with the task of supporting, maintaining, and evolving it once attained, requires substantial IT work and resources.  Now more than ever, companies are struggling to find ways to effectively scale laboratory operations with fewer internal resources and the need for remote capabilities to accommodate off site work.

In this blog, we explore how scientific organizations can benefit from partnering with a third-party informatics provider with specialized scientific expertise to help support and maintain laboratory systems.  We also highlight the key selection criteria to consider in choosing the most appropriate managed services provider (MSP) for the individualized needs of your business.

What level of MSP support does your business need?

Before embarking on selecting an MSP partner, make sure to fully know the needs of your laboratories.  It is critical to understand what the MSP scope will cover.  Will this be a program for just laboratory computing?  Is there a portfolio of applications that need L2 and L3 support?

Once the scope is set, the level of service required to support your laboratory operations is next.   Completing a needs assessment will provide the groundwork from which to build a managed services program tailored to your unique scientific laboratory requirements and aligned to the needs of your business.  It is important to first determine the level of service that will best suit your operations.  Considerations surrounding the overall response and resolution times, hours of support coverage required, and geographical locations of the various facilities should be detailed in planning out the requirements for your program.

Much of this is directly tied to the available budget for the service. Your budget assessment will also be an essential factor in optimizing the delivery cost versus performance aspects of the various levels of service available within a managed services program.  Critical support criteria should be prioritized in terms of the level of service to be provided while other factors may be less crucial to your daily operations.  Your prospective MSP should be able to assist with striking the right balance of performance to cost to meet your budgetary requirements.

Selecting the Appropriate MSP Vendor

When choosing an MSP that best suits the needs of your organization, it is important to assess the breadth of the vendor’s expertise surrounding your laboratory informatics roadmap.  Do they possess the right scientific background and domain expertise to support the full suite of your laboratory applications?  Often times an MSP will deploy support staff that are not scientists by training. Without the proper scientific background, they may not have the ability to understand the full scope of the scientific processes involved in your workflow, potentially placing the outcome of the project at risk of not meeting the intended criteria.

The lab computing systems and scientific instrumentation in a laboratory may encompass a wide variety of highly specialized applications.  An MSP supporting scientific applications, will undoubtedly support enterprise solutions such as electronic laboratory notebooks (ELN), chromatography data systems (CDS), laboratory information systems (LIMS), and sample data management systems (SDMS) drive laboratory production.  It is imperative for your MSP to have a team of scientific informatics experts in place to support each of the relevant domains. Comprehensive coverage from one provider will streamline support efforts across these many diverse platforms.

Another import aspect of selecting an MSP is in determining their ability to be a technology solutions partner to your organization.  For a Laboratory Computing MSP, support will be needed for a wide array of applications and instrumentation as part of the platform.  Each laboratory system requires life cycle support.  Changes in software and hardware configurations, operating systems, connectivity protocols, data formats, and a whole host of variables make ongoing support of these systems a challenge to maintain and integrate within a common informatics platform.  An agile MSP partner will be abreast of the latest developments within the industry and thereby able to provide recommendations to avoid risk and pitfalls in the process of managing ongoing life cycle support of your laboratory informatics.

Recruitment and onboarding of specialized personnel underpins all of the important areas outlined above.  A reliable MSP will have a recruitment engine as an integral component of their business model.  Standard recruiters in the industry external to the MSP business team will have difficulty sourcing staff with expertise in ELN, CDS, LIMS, SDMS, and other highly specialized areas of application required for fully supporting your scientific laboratory informatics roadmap. The MSP support program will not be positioned to continuously deliver high quality support across a vast array of scientific platforms without the ability to quickly source and train scientific and laboratory personnel having expertise in all of the key functional areas.

Embracing Company Culture

Company culture is defined by the shared values, practices and beliefs of the company’s employees.  Important factors such as how people work, make decisions, resolve differences of opinion and navigate change define the rules of behavior within an organization.  Understanding and embracing the culture of your company shares a level of equal importance to the quality of support provided by an MSP partner.  Sharing the same sense of concern and urgency in the response time and quality of work expectations is prerequisite for an effective alliance with your MSP.  Will they be conducting business in a manner that strikes a balance between performance and cost effectiveness? Selecting an MSP with ability to deliver quality results within the framework of your company culture will establish the foundation for your successful partnership.

A Proven Methodological Approach

A proven methodology serves as the primary building blocks for the effective deployment of any managed services program.  Your prospective MSP partner should employ industry best practices throughout their support delivery approach to provide the most value and highest quality of service to your organization.

Key Methodology for Delivering Support Excellence:

• Support from a strategic informatics roadmap
• Lead & deliver through one service team
• Standardize of all MSP activity per industry best practice
• Process documentation to support all delivery activity
• Automate systems & processes
• Deliver through governance & proactive approach to problem management
• Validate & provide regulatory compliance to maintain data integrity
• Explore additional Scientific staffing and onboarding services as needed

Astrix Technology Group:  Your Managed Services Partner of Choice

The Astrix Approach follows a process driven methodology to provide you with the tools, resources and expertise to optimize the management of your laboratory informatics needs.  With a team of over 100 consultants, each having numerous years of experience in their area of specialty, Astrix can provide expertise across all primary domains within your scientific laboratory. Our professionals have successfully demonstrated the use of industry-wide best practices in the evaluation of work processes, functional and technical requirements, laboratory processes and informatics solution options for hundreds of clients across a wide range of industries.

Conclusion

Selecting a managed services provider that is best suited to address the unique needs of your company can be the solution to effectively scaling your scientific laboratory operations and improving your overall business efficiency.  The Astrix Managed Services team has over 25 years of industry proven experience in providing excellent customer service and the ability to deliver the highest quality MSP experience to your scientific laboratory.

Available services through your Astrix MSP program include:

• Helpdesk for Devices, Lab Systems and Users – provides remote helpdesk support for incidents involving lab devices and systems. This service also provides user support and system administration
• Laboratory Computing Support – support all PCs that drive the laboratory environment
• Informatics System Lifecycle Support – system management and maintenance; data archival and migration; deployment of application updates and patches; creation and maintenance of system validation documentation
• Application Organizational Change Management – user training; creating company SOP’s, best practices and work templates
• Scientific and Technical Staffing – source necessary talent quickly with our scientific and technical staffing services

Astrix Managed Services removes the burden of managing your own laboratory devices and informatics systems, tailored to the level of service and performance that is right for your business needs.

The post Selecting a Managed Services Partner for Laboratory Informatics appeared first on Astrix.

In the laboratory environment, cloud adoption has been slower than in other parts of the enterprise. Several informatics systems are now available on cloud-based platforms, and moving to the cloud does offer a more streamlined path to system upgrade and maintenance. Yet, many companies are finding it difficult to migrate legacy, on-premise systems, and those that have managed to move some of their applications to the cloud are finding their IT personnel still bogged down with maintaining legacy infrastructure instead of being able to devote more time to innovative projects. For modern research laboratories, making the transition to the cloud goes well beyond a data migration project – it involves dealing with outdated vendor point solutions, integration between on-premise and cloud systems, and other associated challenges which too often result in latency and performance issues.  It is becoming clear to many in the scientific community that there is a significant amount of complexity and IT work associated with moving to the cloud while integrating with the enterprise ecosystem.

Fortunately, qualified laboratory informatics consultants have stepped in to provide a management layer between the enterprise and the public cloud in ways that allow laboratories to gain all the benefits of cloud-based applications without having to deal with the complexities of cloud integration, data migration, and system customization and management. In this blog, we will discuss how you can utilize a third-party informatics consultant to maximize the benefits from your cloud strategy.

Laboratory Science Business Problems

Modern research and analytical laboratories are experiencing a number of challenges at this time that can be addressed by a consultant specializing in laboratory informatics systems:

• Inefficiency – Laboratories are under increasing pressure to reduce both capital and operational expenses through process optimization and automation, but often times the legacy informatics systems make it very difficult to migrate to the cloud. Many organizations do not have the IT skills necessary to shift from an on-premise informatics system to a cloud-based SaaS environment.
• Complex Silos – Modern laboratories typically utilize many different applications to manage their workflows and data. Usually, there is very little to no integration between these systems.
• CapEx for Lab Systems – Laboratory capital investments for system upgrades and patches are not always supported by business stakeholders. Laboratories are increasingly feeling the pressure to move to a SaaS model where software upgrades are performed as part of predictable operational costs.
• Time-to-Market – In today’s challenging economic environment, businesses are under enormous pressure to speed time-to-market for new products. Research laboratory informatics infrastructures must allow scientists and research IT to focus on innovation and pursue new insights without getting bogged down in infrastructure maintenance, support and upgrades.

A recent SmartLab Exchange survey of over 100 laboratory informatics professionals from around the world provides some additional insight into key issues and trends affecting modern laboratories. The top priorities for these professionals listed in order of response, were:

• Increasing data usability in and out of the laboratory
• Implementing a laboratory informatics system (LIMS or ELNs)
• Investing in practical hardware/software solutions to increase efficiency of the workflow
• Data access and data mining
• Migrating data to a new system
• Integrating legacy systems
• Integration of other non-informatics software systems
• Data security
• Mobility integration

These items highlight the complexity of the IT work required to support and optimize operations in a modern research laboratory. To get the most from your partnership, you will want a consultant that is a technology expert in the areas of laboratory informatics, cloud infrastructure, data warehousing, security, compliance and business continuity. Utilizing a technically capable and experienced informatics services provider will allow your business to take the day to day informatics operational and maintenance component out of the hands of scientists and research IT so they can focus on your core business of discovering new therapies or materials, depending on your domain. The goal is not necessarily to replace traditional IT, as a fully managed solution is not ideal or practical for every laboratory. Instead, the idea is to find the right balance between in-house IT and your third-party informatics consultant that serves your business best.

Laboratory Informatics as a Service (LIaaS)

The first level of support that organizations typically consider for their cloud-based informatics systems is user support via a help desk. Laboratory Informatics vendors, offering systems such as electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs), Laboratory Informatics Management Systems (LIMS), SDMS (Scientific Data Management Systems), may not be poised to deliver the level of support that you need over time. As a result, third-party consultants with expertise in laboratory informatics systems have begun offering L0-L3 user support services, effectively providing Laboratory Informatics as a Service (LIaaS).

It’s important to note that laboratory informatics systems are highly specialized software, and it is therefore critical that your consultant have highly specialized informatics expertise. You’ll want a consultant that has both a solid understanding of the application being supported as well as the domain in which that application is being used – a laboratory and industry-focused consultant can place the public cloud services in the proper context to better serve industry-specific processes and compliance. This requirement is especially important for companies with a very complex IT environment and extensively customized informatics systems.

In addition to a help desk, consultants specializing in laboratory informatics systems can also provide a number of other services that can help optimize your cloud strategy and overall operational efficiency:

• On-site laboratory equipment management – equipment repair, maintenance and calibration; inventory management; integration with data-collection systems.
• Informatics System Lifecycle Support – system management, maintenance and security; data archival and migration; deployment of application updates and patches; creation and maintenance of system validation documentation.
• Application Organizational Change Management – user training; creating company SoPs, best practices and work templates.

A consultant specializing in laboratory informatics systems will leverage their technical expertise, deep industry experience and domain knowledge to facilitate the deployment, integration and management of multiple cloud-based applications, effectively delivering a fully managed enterprise application solution that will provide enormous benefits to your organization.

Benefits of Laboratory Informatics as a Service (LIaaS)

A qualified third-party informatics consultant can dramatically increase the value of your cloud services by providing a subscription and metered-based service for laboratory platforms which can be integrated with other enterprise systems (such as ERP) into a total laboratory solution. Some of the benefits an organization can expect from partnering with a consultant specializing in laboratory informatics include:

• Peace of mind – You can relax, knowing 24×7 proactive monitoring and management is being taken care of by a trusted MSP who guarantees functionality with an SLA.
• Lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) – On-demand services where you only pay for what you use. The MSP takes care of hiring and training necessary staff to manage your application, and you end up with a manageable OpEx that reflects the services you actually used.
• Stay focused on your core business – Leave the complex IT work to the MSP.
• Simplified business and billing – Allows reduction of your multiple software vendor management and communications to a single point of contact that has highly skilled technical resources.
• Reduced Maintenance – Depending on the level of support you choose from your MSP, your system and equipment maintenance can be dramatically reduced.
• Reduced System Down Time – Down time for your applications due to technical issues, upgrades, patches, etc. is dramatically reduced.
• Reduced risk – The MSP takes care of security and compliance issues so you can stay focused on your core business.
• Improves business flexibility and agility – Services are easily changeable to meet changing business needs.
• Consistency – Your informatics applications are monitored and managed against pre-determined SLAs/KPIs.
• Faster Time-to-Market – Increased focus on core business activities and reduced compliance risk enables a shorter timeline to bring your products to market.

Conclusion

When leveraged effectively, cloud technologies are secure and economical and serve to deliver more value to your organization. Migrating applications to the cloud can be extremely complex for laboratories utilizing customized legacy systems, however. In addition, as companies deploy more applications in the cloud, the complexity of system integration and management increases.

To optimize your cloud strategy, it is wise to partner with a cloud-savvy informatics consultant who has experience in your industry. A good services partner will truly understand your business workflow and know how to enhance it. Such a partnership will reduce risk during data migration and give you the lowest TCO possible. Leveraging the right third-party informatics consultant for the right applications as a component of your cloud strategy enables your organization to maximize the return on your scientific application investment, while staying focused on the innovation that drives business success.

The post Why a Third-Party Informatics Consultant Should be Part of Your Cloud Strategy appeared first on Astrix.