When planning a project of any type, it makes perfect sense to initially research and detail the specifics of the project to lay a solid foundation to work from. This is particularly true with software development, where careful initial planning is vital to ensuring the project is legitimate in the eyes of critical stakeholders and will meet specified goals. This demands the creation of a software requirements specification.  Many specification documents for laboratory informatic systems have been compiled over the years. This updated version incorporates standards and regulations and provides a guidance-based approach to building a spec document for your LIMS. A solid set of LIMS requirements can act as a checklist when determining which LIMS vendor is right for your laboratory. [Read More]

As if the looming need to feed the world’s growing population were not enough, farmers are dealing with many other challenges in sustaining their business. Farm automation can help the agriculture industry meet the needed increase in production, while at the same time solving labor shortage problems and allowing for increased care of the environment. Farm-focused agriculture labs can assist with soil and seed analysis, among other things, and utilize the data captured by drones and crop sensors to provide recommendations for crop rotation, fertilizer adjustments, or new pesticide treatments. [Read More]

Agaram Technologies’ Logilab SDMS is a generic software application designed to handle scientific instrument data from any analytical instrument and can facilitate data management with access control. Logilab SDMS will perform scheduled data capture, cataloguing, archival and facilitate restoring data and has capabilities to extract data of interest from instrument output to be pushed to external systems like Electronic Note Book (ELN), Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP). [Read More]

Composable Architecture shifts the focus from monolithic application suites and hosting to use of best of breed solutions as part of a unified platform-ecosystem.  By leveraging business architecture, technologies, and agile thinking, organizations can speed discovery, gain greater agility, and enable flexibility to handle future changes. Many organizations find that the fundamental components to enable Composable Architecture are already in place. [Read More]

Pooling samples and testing the resulting single sample can help laboratories improve productivity, reduce reagent use, and cut costs. Pool-testing can be used to increase throughput if testing resources are limited or during times of increased demand. Sample pooling is used in many industries. [Read More]

Interoperable health information systems in the United States has been a long-road effort that, according to Szarfman et al., has a long way to go yet to reach its full potential. Noting the strain on the digital health systems of hospitals, physician offices, laboratories, and other entities during the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors—many of them from the U.S. FDA—"recommend the implementation of standardized data collection and transmission systems, universal identifiers for individual patients and end users, a reference standard infrastructure to support calibration and integration of laboratory results from equivalent tests, and modernized working practices" in this brief paper. After providing a contextual introduction, they discuss the lack of universal and harmonized data collection and transmission standards and highlight five major issues with modern health systems that need immediate action. After briefly discussing return on investment in adopting the authors' recommendations, they conclude by posting 11 recommendations for U.S. legislators and nine recommendations for public-private partnerships in addressing the issues of health systems interoperability in the United States. They close by noting that while "this problem will not be cheap to fix ... it will be much costlier to ignore."