Do-it-yourself LIMS, Potential Disruptive Technology, No?
Do-it-yourself LIMS, Potential Disruptive Technology, No?
by: Ephraim Gadsby – contributing author
There are over 130 LIMS companies world wide and most industry reports estimate the annual LIMS market to be around $300 million per year. There is something very wrong with this picture.
With Thermo acquiring Innaphase and Innaphase acquiring Beckman’s LIMS, Thermo is undoubtedly the world’s largest supplier of LIMS solutions. Still even with that, Thermo only makes up maybe 15 – 20% of the entire annual market. So this leaves the remaining 129+ companies for the balance. In typical fashion, this boils down to roughly the old 80/20 rule that must be some universal constant like PI (p) or the natural log (ln x) or Avagadro’s number. Eighty percent of the accounted for market is being serviced by 20% of the suppliers. The only problem with this is that the accounted for market is probably only a fraction of the true market that should rival even the instrumentation market for laboratory dollars.
LIMS Unaccounted For:
One thing the LIMS industry reports do not seem to take into account are laboratories that are building their own LIMS with various IT and other Laboratory Informatics tools. Microsoft is probably the largest provider of LIMS solutions with tools like Access and Excel. The funny thing is they probably don’t even know it. This is just some of the perks of being a virtual monopoly.
The very nature of most all laboratories whether they are research oriented or testing oriented is to produce information. Laboratories generally exist to serve a higher purpose of the laboratory’s customer who needs the information the lab produces. The exercise of producing information necessitates the need for Information Management; thus the need for LIMS.
While information generation is the end result of most labs, how they do it varies widely and thus one of the reasons most laboratories build their own ad-hoc information systems with tools like Access and Excel. Even when a laboratory has a LIMS they all seem to need to resort to these generic information management tools to make up for the deficiencies of their purchased LIMS. Other reasons involve the high cost of commercial LIMS packages. A very interesting article recently published in Bio-ITWorld provides an anecdote of Columbia University’s HTS LIMS project. You can download a fully functioning version of the Columbia University LIMS called SLIMS at http://slims.sourceforge.net. This is a prime, working example of a specialized type LIMS that is open source.
Is this “Disruptive Technology”?
Disruptive Technology is a technology that changes the industry in such a way that previous competitive and business rules do not apply. Since the internet has had such a profound effect on the fundamental rules of business, it can be considered a disruptive technology. Another example of Disruptive Technology is the automobile. The automobile replaced the everyday use of the horse and buggy as a form of family transportation. It has made such an impact that you can see a notable difference between the 19th and 20th centuries just because of the Automobile.
So the question is… Is Do-it-yourself LIMS a Disruptive Technology? I don’t think so. I would consider it to be a “Disruptive Business Practice” in that “what is a LIMS vendor to do if everyone starts giving away LIMS”? This is not realistic. However, the concept of the Open Source is very much a possible Disruptive Technology. There is not really much happening on that front in the LIMS market but I can say the Microsoft is taking it very seriously on their front and if there is a company finds a way to make money from an Open Source LIMS approach then the old LIMS vendors had better start learning to adapt.
Stay Tuned!
The Laboratory Informatics market is dynamic and ever changing. It is immature compared to more mainstream applications like accounting, CRM and the like but be assured that it will be subject to the same market pressures and all of this will translate into good things for most all concerned, especially laboratory consumers. LIMS suppliers that cannot adapt will die off and I think they will be glad to go if the cost of change is to high. I will continue to search the Internet for news on how open source plays out in the LIMS arena.
Cheers,
Ephraim Gadsby – Bertie’s Alter Ego
