Integrating Enterprise-Wide LIMS with Remote Field Testing PDAs for Enhanced Audit Trail and Significant Time and Cost Savings

Water companies in the UK are required to comply with stringent national and European Union

(EU) quality standards. The latest UK legislation came into force in April 2010, under the title “The

Water Supply (Water Quality) Regulations 2010, with the aim to ensure the quality of water

Water Directive 98/83/EC sets quality standards for drinking water quality at the tap and the

general obligation that drinking water must be wholesome and clean.

Water quality regulations are strict and generally include wide safety margins covering bacteria,

chemicals such as nitrates and pesticides, metals such as lead as well as such basic criteria as

the appearance and taste of the water. To comply with the legislation, water companies are

obliged to regularly monitor the quality of their drinking water. As a result, water companies take

thousands of samples for testing every year to make sure that the water supplied is clean and

safe and that quality standards are met. These samples are taken from service reservoirs, water

treatment works and directly from the taps in customers’ homes.

The Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) within the UK Environment and Heritage Service

independently audits the tests undertaken by water companies and issues a report each year on

its findings. In that way, the DWI ensures that water companies meet more than 50 legal

standards for drinking water quality.

Within a water company, a LIMS is required to undertake a variety of tasks, including receipt of

samples for chain of custody from field collection, sample login and storage at the laboratories,

and reporting of results to management and regulatory agencies. In order to ensure that all tasks

are performed in the most efficient manner, the decision to select a specific LIMS solution must

be based on a number of key criteria. A critical component of the LIMS analysis is the ability of

the system support the needs of the water industry with built in capability for sample scheduling,

prioritization and reporting of the contaminants as required within the legislation..

Since the analytical requirements for sample analysis are pre-determined, the system should

support determinand limits and testing frequency rules that automatically increase the number of

samples taken in areas where a breach has occurred. For water companies operating multiple

laboratories in geographically remote locations, as well as using contracted water samplers, the

ability of the LIMS to be available externally to the lab, for example via the internet, is vital. Any

LIMS solution should offer is the ability to easily integrate with other applications and instruments

in and out of the laboratory, providing one standard user-interface and helping water companies

to more easily monitor the testing process across their multiple laboratories. Ease of use is also

very important, enabling even the novice user to quickly familiarize with the system. Graphical

dashboards and alerts that highlight key metrics for lab managers makes sure that they are able

to meet legal requirements for reporting data to the regulatory authorities within a prescribed

timeframe.

For many years, water utilities involved in water and wastewater sampling have identified a need

for a solution to reduce current manual/paper processes in the field that also integrate directly

with a laboratory information management system (LIMS). Sampling plans are held in LIMS,

having been agreed and setup in advance to meet regulatory requirements, and these plans are

used to generate a collection run for each sampler. The collection run defines where samples

must be taken from, which sample bottles must be used and any onsite tests that have to be

performed. Details of all activities carried out in the field then have to be entered into the LIMS.

A solution was needed that would automate this process, but without making the samplers’ job

any more difficult or onerous. The goal was to make the field sampling process more efficient and

improve the audit trial. Discussions within the water industry at various user meetings revealed

that ruggedized PDAs could be an ideal solution as they are typically small, easy to use and have

a number of useful technologies built-in, such as GPS, GPRS, bar code readers, Wi-Fi and

Bluetooth.

Northern Ireland Water (formerly Water Service) is the sole provider of water and sewerage

services in Northern Ireland. The company supplies 625 million liters of clean water every day for

to ensure the cleanliness of its drinking water and that quality standards are met, NI Water carries

out over 150,000 sophisticated tests. Samples are analyzed at two sites, one in Belfast and one

in Londonderry. The Belfast site conducts clean water bacteriological analysis and all clean water

and trade effluent analysis.

For years, the company’s main laboratory facilities used an in-house bespoke LIMS which was

developed with what was thought at the time as a unique way of labelling samples, using prefixes

(for example, 95 for samples taken in the year 1995). This process for identifying and managing

samples continued until a regulatory critical mass was reached in the year 2000, and so a new,

more robust and efficient solution was needed. In 2001, NI Water installed a LIMS solution as

part of its continuous focus on improving the efficiency of the sample management process and

the integrity of the samples collected from the field.

The company selected Thermo Scientific SampleManager LIMS™ to improve workflow

efficiencies, productivity and sample integrity as well as to ensure it adheres to and can document

its adherence to the strict regulations governing the water industry. NI Water has also recently

implemented CSols Remote Sampler, which allows field samples to be taken and recorded in

situ, and uploaded directly into LIMS, thus saving time and reducing transcription errors as well

as providing a secure record of sampler locations.

The use of Remote Sampler has allowed the company to ensure that all samples taken in the

field are accurately recorded, taken where they are claimed to be and automatically inputted into

the LIMS at source. As a result, time is saved and data management is facilitated. NI Water has

realized an improvement in the integrity of samples across two geographical areas, as well as an

improvement in the accuracy of the data resulting from those remotely-collected samples. In

addition, the remote sampler PDAs allow for more rapid and accurate transference of information

to the LIMS, allowing analysts to begin their analysis faster, further improving the quality of water

analysis. NI Water’s water quality standards are improving year on year and at the tap its water

was 99.74% compliant in 2009 measured as Mean Zonal Compliance.

The use of GPS on the PDAs will in the future facilitate automatic route planning to maximize the

efficiency of the sample run. Samplers will be able to send data to the LIMS from the field so by

the time the sample arrives in the laboratory the information will have already been received.

Additionally, as the GPS will have all audit sample points programmed on it, will also allow a

sampler from another area to cover an area they are not familiar with, which will have a direct

positive impact on the workflow and personnel planning. More efficient route planning should

mean samples arrive at the laboratory earlier, in better condition, thus enhancing the quality of

the testing.

To ensure regulatory compliance, water companies must equip their laboratories with the

technologies and infrastructure that allow them to deliver consistent support to ensure the quality

of their drinking water. LIMS can play a crucial role, allowing water companies to deliver a reliable

service while demonstrating regulatory compliance. The major benefit realized in water testing

laboratories following the installation of a LIMS solution is improved operational efficiency,

providing the water company with a full sample recording, management and reporting system,

while automating workflow and integrating with other laboratory instrumentation and systems. By

integrating an enterprise-level LIMS with a remote field testing PDA, the efficiency and security of

data entry are improved, and sample identification and tracking across remote laboratories and

field collection points are greatly enhanced. All samples are recorded on a single electronic

database, providing a means to retrieve and report data in a way that would never have been

possible previously.

The integration of a remote sampler field testing system with an enterprise-level LIMS has been

found to deliver essential transparency between data gathered in the field and management

reporting generated by the LIMS. The automation of both the front end sample collection and

back end reporting eliminates manual transcription errors and, because of the speed in receiving

samples at reception, significant time savings are realized and quality of water samples and

reporting are enhanced.

For more information about Thermo Scientific Informatics solutions, please call +44 161 942 3000

(Intl) or +1 866 463 6522 (US), email marketing.informatics@thermofisher.com or visit

www.thermoscientific.com/informatics

1. The Water Supply (Water Quality) Regulations 2010,

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