April News – STARLIMS
Record Attendance at STARLIMS Forum
A record 180 STARLIMS customers came to Ft. Lauderdale for four days in March to attend the biennial STARLIMS Forum users’ conference.
In his welcoming address, Itschak Friedman, founder and head of STARLIMS, informed attendees that 154 companies have acquired STARLIMS technology since the last Forum conference in 2010, and the company posted 35 percent growth in 2011 compared with 8 percent for the global LIMS market. STARLIMS is the fastest growing LIMS provider and is investing aggressively in international expansion, technology development and customer service and support.
“We are focusing attention on increasing value for our laboratory customers knowing that they are facing difficult challenges to do more with less every day,” said Friedman. “Based on our customers’ input, we are developing both automation and GUI tools that help lab personnel perform their work more efficiently and rapidly while simultaneously ensuring high quality of test results.” He added that to be more “in touch” with customers’ needs STARLIMS has hired new product management teams with strong experience in vertical industries, such as manufacturing quality management and forensics, as well as a customer relations manager who is responsible to periodically perform customer surveys used to determine the direction STARLIMS takes its products and services.
The Forum keynote speaker, noted futurist and writer Michael Rogers, wowed the audience by peering into what lies ahead in wireless technology. “By 2020, we will be surprised by how much wireless technology is around. Already, phone companies can’t make money on voice anymore, so they want to sell more data capability, and more capacity is becoming available because analog televisions are gone,” he said. “It won’t be long until losing a wireless connection will be as inconvenient as losing electricity.” Rogers also predicted that cloud computing will grow exponentially as truly intelligent applications will become available through cloud computing.
Mobile Apps Coming for STARLIMS Users
Currently just 25 percent of laboratories in the United States have implemented mobile devices for their daily operations but interest is growing, especially for tablets. There are just a few laboratory specific apps available today and 60 percent of the custom apps for labs are developed internally.
At Forum, STARLIMS gave its customers an opportunity to preview possible mobile apps for STARLIMS LIMS and ELN products displayed in an interactive kiosk. Attendees also
participated in a hands-on workshop conducted by Design Concepts, Inc., in which they were able to design their own mobile app concepts. STARLIMS, in effect, took full advantage of the Forum conference to generate feedback from customers regarding a full range of mobile apps possibilities.
Itschak Friedman said that designing software applications for one device and one operating system is no longer enough, however, mobile apps are not the answer for everything. “You can’t do everything on an i-Phone. Desktop apps are great for intensive data processing and creation while mobile apps are great for data consumption,” Friedman explained. “For LIMS products, mobile apps need to focus on specific tasks which are performed at locations without desktops, thus eliminating the need to record data on paper and then transcribe to a desktop. The decisions for designing mobile apps involve determining which screen – PC, tablet or smart phone — is right for the specific job,” he added.
At Forum, STARLIMS showed early versions of its Next Gen designer which allows users to develop, deploy and maintain HTML5 apps for both iOS and Android platforms. The pre-release Windows 8 / Metro crime scene mobile app to help investigators gather and inventory evidence was demonstrated in theatric, ketchup-stained crime scene. Friedman said STARLIMS will start rolling out these capabilities with technology builds slated for the fourth quarter 2012.
STARLIMS Announces European Distributor Acquisitions
On March 2, Abbott announced that STARLIMS acquired several longtime distribution partners. They are: Varilab in France, two privately held businesses in Spain operating as STARLIMS Iberia, a private Dutch company operating as STARLIMS Netherlands with a branch in Sweden, and its distribution partner in Israel called STARLIMS Israel, Ltd.
In Germany, STARLIMS formed a new entity called STARLIMS GmbH, based in Witten, to provide direct support to German and Swiss customers.
“The successful completion of these transactions represents Abbott’s commitment to invest in and accelerate the growth of STARLIMS’s core business,” said Itschak Friedman, head of Abbott’s STARLIMS business. “With these acquisitions, we now have more than 100 experienced LIMS engineers in the region allowing us to better serve our fast-growing European customer base and further strengthen our position as a leading provider of laboratory information management systems in Europe and other important markets.”
