January 23, 2019 - Ensuring Data Integrity with the Allotrope Framework

Data integrity is a hot topic as we move into 2019 and for good reason.  Pharma and biotech companies produce an enormous amount of experimental R&D data. The sheer volume and complexity of the data makes managing this critical asset challenging. Leading companies are thus investing heavily in initiatives aimed at more effectively managing experimental data across its full lifecycle in hopes of driving the innovation necessary to stay competitive and ensure data integrity.

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January 23, 2019 - Factors to Consider When Choosing Your LIMS Project Manager

IT projects are notorious for high failure rates. Cloud portfolio management provider Innotas recently conducted a survey in which half of the businesses responding reported an IT project failure within the previous 12 months. Due to a wide range of factors, a successful laboratory information management system (LIMS) project can be particularly difficult to achieve.

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January 23, 2019 - To be Paperless or Not to be? That is the Question for the Scientific Laboratory

“To be [paperless], or not to be, that is the question.”(Hamlet, Act III Scene 1)

Or at least it used to be the question. Today many labs are finding themselves obligated to move away from using paper in the lab, either for productivity enhancement purposes or just from the need to more easily adhere to regulations that apply to them.   If you are working in one of the labs that is still clinging to a ton of paper and has not turned on the servers and gone electronic, the task of reducing paper is not as daunting as it sounds. Many organizations decide to take baby steps when addressing their paper reduction goals while others throw the whole kit and caboodle in and go entirely paperless all at once. But either way you decide, the most important part is starting the discussion.

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January 2, 2019 - FDA’s Guidance on Genetic Testing: What You Need to Know

In traditional medical care, diseases are typically detected via chemical changes associated with a particular condition and all patients receive a similar dose of a medication as treatment. While this one-size-fits-all approach has led to great advancements in medicine, it has by no means been successful for all patients.

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January 2, 2019 - Top Data Management Challenges in Genomics Research

With the successful completion of the Human Genome Project on April 14, 2003, the mapping of the human genome took approximately 13 years and 3 billion dollars to accomplish. Today, next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology allows a human genome to be sequenced in just a few days for a few hundred dollars.

While genomic research is paving the way for significant advances in healthcare, its practice has led to new challenges for biotechnology firms in terms of increasing data volume, variety and complexity.Given that the data representing a single human genome takes up to 100 gigabytes of storage space, biotech companies engaged in genomic research must develop the computing infrastructure and skills to manage, store, analyze and interpret massive quantities of highly complex data. In this blog, we will explore challenges and best practices involved in addressing data management challenges in genomics research.

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December 19, 2018 - How Much Does Not Having a LIMS Cost?

The topic of the “cost of LIMS” or the “true cost of LIMS” or “saving costs with LIMS”, have all been previously discussed in a number of forums and mediums (blogs, white papers, webinars, videos, etc.).  Interestingly, these discussions tend to focus on hard costs and measurable cost savings with only the occasional reference to non-monetary costs or qualitative measures.  What has not been fully explored is the converse of this concept of the cost of implementing a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS).  That is, what is the cost of notimplementing a LIMS in a lab organization?

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December 12, 2018 - Why System Requirements are an Essential Part of Your Informatics Project

Laboratory informatics projects can be extremely complex and costly. LIMS projects, for example, require large investments of money, resources and time – costing anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, while requiring hundreds to thousands of resource hours, to implement. Given the financial, regulatory and operational risk to your organization that a laboratory informatics project represents, it is imperative that you get the project right the first time.

One of the keys to a successful laboratory informatics project is the development of a comprehensive set of functional and technical requirements for the system in question. Properly developed requirements are critical to guide and inform many different aspects of a successful informatics project. Too often, companies fail to do the necessary work in this area and end up deploying a system that fails to realize the potential business benefits that served as motivation for the project in the first place.

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December 12, 2018 - Factors to Consider When Choosing Between an On-Premise, Managed Hosting, or SaaS LIMS

Laboratory information management systems (LIMS) capabilities have expanded dramatically in recent years in order to better serve scientific laboratories. As LIMS technology has changed, so has the number of factors that need to be considered when choosing the best LIMS for your laboratory.

A variety of different architectures are now available for modern LIMS, and these different architectures determine the way LIMS are installed, managed and utilized. Key factors to consider when selecting a LIMS is the type of architecture that is best aligned with your business goals, as well as the standards your organization’s IT group has established for IT architecture.

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December 12, 2018 - User Requirements Workshops Bring Added Benefits

Defining user requirements is not only one of the most important aspects of purchasing a LIMS but frequently one of the most challenging. If it is not dealt with in sufficient detail, it can impact the quoted costs and lead to complications and delays at the later stages of the project. Recognizing the importance of this, we have undertaken a number of user requirement workshops in recent months with prospective customers.

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December 5, 2018 - Common Mistakes in Computer System Validation