What the FDA’s Quality Metrics Reporting Program Means for Your Lab
Quality metrics are utilized throughout the pharmaceutical industry to assure product quality and facilitate continued improvement of drug manufacturing processes. The FDA has also shown a significant interest in quality metrics, as data detailing compliance with quality standards in drug manufacturing helps the FDA establish compliance and inspection policies, predict and potentially mitigate future drug shortages, and know how to support and encourage drug manufacturers to implement stat-of-the-art quality management systems.…
FluxCTTX: A LIMS-based tool for management and analysis of cytotoxicity assays data
This 2015 paper by Faria-Campos et al. of the Brazilian Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais presents the reader with an overview of FluxCTTX, essentially a cytotoxicity module for the Flux laboratory information management system (LIMS). Citing a lack of laboratory informatics tools that can handle the specifics of cytotoxicity assays, the group develop FluxCTTX and tested it in five different laboratory environments, concluding that it can better "guarantee the quality of activities in the process of cytotoxicity tests and enforce the use of good laboratory practices (GLP)."
Laboratory Informatics Weekly Update – Volume 15, Issue 29
August 02, 2017 Laboratory Informatics Weekly Update Volume 15, Issue 29 In This Issue Webcast Focus AUGUST 23, 2017, 2:00PM EST/6:00PM UTC: ELN Implementations - Why they Fail to Realize their Full Potential NEW DATE: Join us for this one hour, complimentary webinar in which we examine the reasons why ELNs fail to realize their full potential and what can be done to improve your chances of success. WEDNESDAY AUGUST 30, 2017, 1:00PM EDT/5:00 UTC: Astrix Webinar – When to upgrade SampleManager LIMS – The critical factors Astrix Technology is hosting a live webinar on Wednesday, August 30th at 1PM…Is Your LIMS Master Data "Green?"
This blog series explores the use of green concepts (reduce, reuse, and recycle) for LIMS Master Data Management to improve productivity and efficiency.Interfacing instruments, data systems, and information systems to LIMS: It can wait!
The benefits are clear, but why is it that interfacing systems and instruments to a LIMS tends to be one of the last things done during a LIMS implementation if it is done at all?PathEdEx – Uncovering high-explanatory visual diagnostics heuristics using digital pathology and multiscale gaze data
The visual and non-visual analysis techniques of pathology diagnosis are still in a relative infancy, representing a complex conglomeration of various data sources and techniques "which currently can be described more like a subjective exercise than a well-defined protocol." Enter Shin et al., who developed the PathEdEx system, an informatics computational framework designed to pair digital pathology images and pathologists' eye/gaze patterns associated with those images to better understand and develop diagnostics methods and educational material for future pathologists. "All in all," they conclude, "the PathEdEx informatics tools have great potential to uncover, quantify, and study pathology diagnostic heuristics and can pave a path for precision diagnostics in the era of precision medicine."
Electronic lab notebooks: Can they replace paper?
Where are electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) going, and what do they lack? How does data from several user groups paint the picture of the ELN and its functionality and shortcomings? In this 2017 paper published in Journal of Cheminformatics, researchers from the University of Southampton and BioSistemika examine the market and users of ELNs/paper laboratory notebooks, intent of identifying areas ELNs could be improved. They conclude that optimally there should be "an ELN environment that can serve as an interface between paper lab notebooks and the electronic documents that scientists create, one that is interoperable and utilizes semantic web and cloud technologies, particularly given that "current technology is such that it is desirable that ELN solutions work alongside paper for the foreseeable future."
