A laboratory informatics solution (e.g., LIMS, ELN, CDS) is only as strong as its foundation. The strongest foundation for a laboratory informatics solution implementation is a thorough user requirements document, generated to identify exactly what the system is intended to do. [Read More]

As we reflect on 2021, the ApolloLIMS team has noticed some interesting developments in the diagnostics space. The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic along with some other general developments within the biotech sector overall have combined to impact the diagnostic space for the better. [Read More]

Following the recent success of our latest webinar Managing and Maintaining Sterile Manufacturing with Environmental Monitoring, Autoscribe Informatics has made the recording available for Quality Management personnel and other interested parties. [Read More]

This past year presented many difficulties and challenges for everyone, especially for labs dealing with the demands of COVID testing and working to share their data with other health systems. Learn more about the trends we saw affecting clinical labs in 2021, and what topics most readers were interested in on our blog.
[Read More]

Too often companies implementing multi-site, multi-national, multi-discipline LIMS do so based on the needs of a single lead site. This may potentially ignore the needs of other sites; a mistake that only shows itself when trying to roll out the LIMS solution across the globe. [Read More]

In this 2021 journal article published in Journal of Medical Biochemistry, Arifin and Yusof of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia examine the error factors that come with using a laboratory information system (LIS) and propose the "total testing process for laboratory information systems" (TTP-LIS). This process leans on a variety of existing frameworks and lean quality improvement methods to meet the authors' needs and is applied to two large hospitals in Malaysia. After examining human, technology, and organizational factors, the authors discuss their findings, noting that their "findings showed the practicality of the TTP-LIS framework as an evaluation tool in identifying errors and their causal factors. The use of lean tools—namely, VSM, A3, and 5 Why—enabled us to analyze and visualize the root cause of problems in an objective and structured manner. " Those root causes were able to be categorized in three ways: "as a latent failure in system development, as poor error management, and as unsatisfactory lab testing processes and LIS use."