The first Web Browser Based LIMS
The first Web Browser Based LIMS
by John H. Jones
In 1997 LABLynx introduced the first 100% web browser based, commercially available LIMS. Now after nearly 10 years, other LIMS suppliers have agreed that a web browser based LIMS is the best solution for customers. Mind you, there are still a number of vendors who disagree strongly.
For the past 5 years, I have noticed that a great many LIMS vendors have been introducing, with great fanfare, new versions of their LIMS that are web browser based. A recent poll on LIMSfinder asks users which type of LIMS they prefer, windows or web. At last check, over 50% prefered web browser based.
The benefits of web browser based LIMS to the LIMS user has remained the same since 1997 but these benefits are being introduced as if they were something new. They are not new, but who cares? The only thing new is that the old products that existed prior to being web browser based, simply did not have the functionality provided by a true browser based LIMS. That would make it new only to the LIMS vendor.
Setting that aside, the only thing that matters are the benefits to the lab and it is clear that the web browser based LIMS has been the past, the present and the future of LIMS, regardless of how long it takes for the rest of the suppliers to catch up.
There are no longer any reasons for a lab to choose a LIMS built on Windows only. There is nothing that you cannot do in the browser that you can do in Windows (that would be of use to users) but there is a world of things you can do with a browser that a pure Windows based application cannot do.
With all of the benefits of a web browser based LIMS and most importantly all of the product choices, the LIMS consumer should look at all of the choices. The web browser based LIMS provides a richer, easier to use interface than windows and functionality that Windows simply cannot compete with.
Here are a few LIMS companies/products that are web browser based:
- www.lablynx.com (the first in the market place, debuted at Pittcon 1997)
- www.starlims.com (debuts at Pittcon 2006)
- www.labvantage.com
- www.bikalabs.com (an open source, free LIMS (I think))
- www.wavefrontsoftware.com
- www.tuppas.com
- www.thermo.com
- www.labware.com
I am sure there are many others. Maybe other vendors can post a note to this blog if their system is 100% browser based.
