February 26, 2010 - Beware of Greeks bearing gifts (timeo Danaos et dona ferentis)

I wrote the following article over a year ago entitled “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”. Today I was shown a real world example of what I was writing about, by reference to a law suit by one LIMS vendor against another. The law suit is a bit of a soap opera and really is quite sad to see the lengths that vendors will go to in attempts to disparage each other to clients.

February 17, 2010 - LiMSforum.com passes the 3,000 member mark! Join the largest independent LIMS User’s Group today.

Today, the LIMSforum.com User’s Group has over 3,000 members. LiMSforum is the largest & most active User’s Group for Laboratory, Scientific & Health Informatics professionals to meet, post articles, jobs, videos, downloads & SaaS Applications for LIMS, ELN, CDS, SDMS, LIS, EMR, Robotics, Chromatography, Spectroscopy, Bioinformatics, Life Sciences & more…

February 10, 2010 - EMR 2.0: The Game Has Changed! Find out how: Free Recorded Webinar

id you miss this important and informative webinar? No problem, we recorded it for you! Go to Health.limsforum.com (a free LinkedIn group) discussions section to view it free. If you aren’t a member, no problem, it takes only a second to sign up and with automatic acceptance.

February 6, 2010 - SAP-QM and xMII as "LIMS" Option. Basically can SAP-QM be used in place of a LIMS in manufacturing?

A lively discussion has been started at www.limsforum.com (the largest and most active Linkedin group to discuss LIMS, scientific and health informatics topics).  If you are not a member of this group it only takes a second to join and you can participate in the discussion or simply watch.  Check it out.

January 28, 2010 - LIMS Integration for Hydrocarbon Processing and LNG Plants

By Kevin Smith, director of sales, Thermo Fisher Scientific and Colin Thurston, director of product strategy, process industries, informatics, Thermo Fisher Scientific.

The Natural Gas Market Review 2008 published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasted that global demand for natural gas will continue to grow at a fast pace, with liquefied natural gas (LNG) exhibiting a dramatic increase of output1. The latest Oil Market Report of IEA, published in August 2008, reveals that global oil product demand for 2008 was 86.9 mb/d (+0.9% versus 2007) and is expected to reach 87.8 mb/d in 2009 (+1.1% versus 2008)2. The upstream stages of exploration and characterization of oil and gas play a crucial role towards timely production, allowing for global petrochemical companies to address increasing demand.

This article discusses the challenges facing the oil and gas processing industry and stresses the necessity for LIMS deployment. It also details the main benefits resulting from LIMS integration in the oil and gas exploration and characterization stages and provides a real-life application example to further demonstrate the benefits.

January 24, 2010 - Disposing of confidential data is not an easy task

At some point in time in your career, you will be obliged to destroy confidential data that is in your possession. I am not talking about pulling an Enron either. If you work for a government lab or even a private sector lab, you know how much data your lab produces by the minute. The sheer amount of data can be overwhelming. Your organization may be performing work for another organization where you have a confidentiality agreement in place and when you complete your work for that other organization, you will be responsible for completely destroying that data after you have released it to your client.

January 17, 2010 - Which LIMS implementation process is right for you?

Laboratories not only have different functional needs that their LIMS solution must meet but they also have system implementation needs that can have a profound affect on the success of the LIMS implementation. Even if you succeed in choosing the right LIMS for your lab, the implementation process can make the difference between success and failure. There are basically 3 types of implementation processes (Packaged, Collaborative, Turn-key). Let’s rank them from the least expensive to the most expensive processes.

January 13, 2010 - Elevating the Role of Laboratory Informatics to Assist Mission Critical Decision Making in the Enterprise

By Kim Shah, VP Marketing & Business Development, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Informatics

One of the key challenges faced by life science organizations today is the inability to turn the vast amount of laboratory data generated into useful information that enables management at all levels of the organization to make timely and informed decisions. Many companies still use manual processes for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data; they also use both structured and unstructured content. A worldwide market research study on laboratory information management system (LIMS) users conducted by Strategic Directions International (Los Angeles, Calif.) determined that over 70% of laboratories have less than half of their instruments interfaced with a LIMS.

January 3, 2010 - The development of a thriving Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE) for Laboratory, Scientific & Health Industry Stakeholders

The Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE) is the natural evolution of Business on the Internet and the convergence of software applications (such as LIMS, ELN, LIS, ERP, EMR, EHR, ECM and many other enterprise class applications) with Social Media to create a highly connected and integrated community of stakeholders including: Customers, Vendors. Employees, Trading Partners, Media, Government and other regulatory bodies.

December 31, 2009 - Try out the SaaS (web hosted) webLIMS.com product from LabLynx, Inc.

SaaS (software as a service) LIMS has really taken off in 2009 and our orders going into 2010 have nearly exceeded all of our orders in 2009 for webLIMS. The fantastic market response to our webLIMS.com offering pushed the revenues for LabLynx for 2009 to be over double that in 2008.

December 31, 2009 - SaaS (software as a service): 10 Trends for 2010

A recent blog post from Michael Dunham showed up on the SaaS for Science group on Linkedin. The posting is an interesting read and if you are considering SaaS applications for your laboratory or organization, you will want to read this posting.

December 29, 2009 - ASTM CCR (Continuity of Care Record) technical overview – An alternative to HL7

In my previous blog post, a video provided a simplistic overview of HL7 and its purpose. There is a new alternative to HL7 called CCR (Continuity of Care Record). This new standard appears to be much easier to deal with from a technical standpoint and offers more capabilities. However, HL7 has been around a lot longer and has gained momentum. After studying both CCR and HL7, I can say that CCR is the better mouse trap but the age of HL7 and its momentum that has been built from its age still means that we software developers must still continue to support it (nothing is ever easy).

December 28, 2009 - HL7 Explained Simply

For those of you who are interested in a simple explanation of HL7 and its various uses, take a look at this video:

December 11, 2009 - The Laboratory, Scientific & Health Informatics Blogosphere… an aggregated view

The Internet is the great democracy when it comes to information. There is a lot of junk on the internet but likewise there is a lot of good stuff. The idea is to cut through the c**p and get to the good stuff. I think I have created a pretty good start when it comes to Laboratory, Scientific and Health Informatics information, with the creation of http://www.limsnews.com. The good thing about this is that it saves you the time from having to visit all these sites. Just read the news article and if you are interested, click and it takes you to the article source.

December 5, 2009 - How much is that LIMS in the window?

Do you have a difficult time getting a price list on a LIMS or getting a straight answer about the price of LIMS software? This Dilbert cartoon says it all....

November 28, 2009 - The largest and most active LIMS, Laboratory, Scientific & Health Informatics community on Linkedin

If you are not currently a member of www.LIMSforum.com you will want to join. It is now the largest and most active non-commercial, community driven LIMS group on Linkedin today. The group was started exactly 5 months ago today with 1 member and has exploded to over 2,350 members in that short period of time. The reason for this great success is the fact the the group and all of the subgroups are entirely community driven and where all stakeholders including user, vendors and consultants in the laboratory and LIMS industries are encouraged to post and share information.

November 22, 2009 - Social Media for Scientists – Presented by scientists for scientists

The following Slideshare presentation provides an interesting perspective from a scientist’s point of view regarding what is known as Social Media. There is a lot of hype today in the press and around the office water cooler concerning “Social Media”. Don’t get snowed or overwhelmed by all this stuff. It is practical and can be useful to all scientific professionals and at a level that everyone can relate to.

November 16, 2009 - LIMS Management – The Old Occupation Using New Ideas

Laboratory Information Management Systems, or LIMS, is a new idea in an old field - information management. Older Laboratory Informational Systems, or LIS, has been a part of laboratory informatics for decades, and has had its share of problems.

November 15, 2009 - Just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should

Recently I have noticed a rash of client workstation lock downs at corporate and government sites. This is where the IT department locks the computer work station down of the users and prevents them from using the PC as little more than a terminal. It prevents the users from even making changes to their web browser settings or if they do make changes to the settings, an IT controlled program periodically will go and reset everything on the client workstation making the user go through hoops to reset their browser. Aaaah, IT services, we are here to help you! You know…. sort of like the tax man.

November 15, 2009 - Creative Commons / Science Commons – Key to sharing Scientific Knowledge

Have you noticed a little symbol called "Creative Commons" showing up on numerous on-line publications, including this blog? This little icon is being adopted more and more by publishers on the Internet, especially in the scientific community. Creative Commons is helping to guarantee the free and open access to vital scientific information and publications.