Taking LIMS to a hire level

Laboratory information management systems are becoming a staple of laboratory life – but at £20,000 to buy, could rental be the best way to get your hands on a LIMS? 

SINCE the first commercial LIMS appeared in the 1980's, computer hardware prices have fallen dramatically, but the relatively small installed base has kept the price of LIMS software artificially high, and a typical LIMS for a small contract lab can still cost £10-20,000 to buy. According to one estimate, there are 14-15,000 laboratories of all kinds in the UK, of which only 20% have a LIMS installed, so there are many laboratories out there that could enjoy the benefits of a LIMS.

Most users of any popular PC software package - word processor, spreadsheet, etc - recognise that it contains far more functionality than they will probably ever need, and expect it to be regularly updated and properly supported, so are quite comfortable with buying it "off the shelf". Could the same be said of LIMS software? If so, the potential exists to dramatically reduce costs and make LIMS accessible to virtually any laboratory. A number of LIMS companies are offering “out of the box” solutions, but can the smaller lab afford to take the risk that these solutions will deliver what they need?

QSI, suppliers of the WinLIMS family of products, now offer WinLIMS rental, a concept that provides “out of the box” LIMS software for a rental fee of a few hundred pounds a month - typically £265 per month for a 3-user system. This concept was developed in response to a clearly identified user need. QSI had supplied WinLIMS on a conventional direct sale basis to a number of smaller laboratories and their experiences had a major influence on the WinLIMS rental concept. Typical of them was MicroCheck Technical Services Ltd, of Trowbridge, Wiltshire, a contract laboratory offering testing and consultancy services, largely to the food and beverage industry but also to the cosmetics, pharmaceutical and allied industries.

MicroCheck’s workload is predominantly microbiology and food hygiene, with a customer base of over 100 clients, each of whom can submit one sample or thousands of samples per month. Quality is seen as paramount - the company holds UKAS accreditation and is also approved by DEFRA and leading retailers such as Marks and Spencer. It has recently been approved by MHRA for microbiological testing on pharmaceutical products.

Before WinLIMS, a largely paper-based system was used to record sample entry and results. For reporting and invoicing, a combination of proprietary word processing, spreadsheet and database solutions was used to generate paper reports. There was a significant bottleneck at the reporting stage, which for clients holding stocks of foodstuffs pending a microbiology report, could have significant implications. MicroCheck’s invoicing was also affected by this bottleneck, with an obvious impact on cash flow. Elimination of these delays was a key consideration in the WinLIMS purchase decision. Improving data security, traceability and validation was another strategic objective, as was the ability to customise reports to customer requirements and carry out trend reporting and similar procedures.

Two years on, the transition has been remarkable. With the same staffing levels, sample throughput has increased by 50%. MicroCheck has recently opened a second laboratory in Coventry, and has been able to seamlessly integrate data from that laboratory into the “parent” WinLIMS system based in Trowbridge. Many of the formerly manual processes have been automated, as described by Erik Thompson, who led the introduction of WinLIMS and is now Site Leader at the new Coventry laboratory, said: “Samples are now booked into WinLIMS via an electronic spreadsheet. Labels are generated automatically, and laboratory worksheets printed off in minutes so that our main focus can be on ensuring the high quality of work carried out and services offered to the client.

“Results are automatically checked against customer specification limits in the system. This allows clients to be kept up-to-date with unusual results and interim reports, enabling them to act on findings before they become problems.
When providing a service to an industry where some clients may not even have a full-time technical manager, it is essential to have a flexible means of accessing test data so that the individual requirements of customers can be met.  Because of the way WinLIMS holds information in intuitively linked tables, it’s easy to extract data and present it in whatever format is most helpful to the client.  This includes bespoke trending reports which can save customers days of work interpreting pages of information. One customer has said that by having reports in his prescribed format, his internal reporting has speeded up by 2-3 days, with less transcription errors.
Reports are generated as soon as the last result is ready and the sample has been reviewed and electronically signed off by a qualified member of staff. Certificates of Analysis are then saved as secure files and e-mailed to customers. Customer waiting time is now determined only by how long it takes the micro-organisms to grow! Invoicing is now done direct from the LIMS data, including different price structures for each customer, and this has had a significant positive impact on cash flow.
Quality is vital to us, so the ease of obtaining key performance indicators is particularly valuable. Databases of information on all aspects of laboratory activity can be extracted direct from the LIMS. Audit trails record all changes made to sample information, and automatic status tracking makes it easy to follow a sample’s progress throughout the laboratory.”

General manager, Bill Thompson added: “We couldn’t have grown as we have without a LIMS, and it’s now hard to imagine life without one. We have by no means exhausted the vast range of functionality in WinLIMS, but that means we can grow into the system as we use it – there are some very attractive functions we haven’t implemented yet, like remote customer access to results. Like any complex software, it takes time to fully appreciate and extract the full benefits, so don’t expect instantaneous results, and be prepared to put the time in. And another tip - ensure that your objectives and detailed requirements are clear at the outset, it’ll speed up the implementation. WinLIMS Rental wasn’t available when we started, but we think it’s the ideal solution for companies like ours.”

QSI’s UK managing director Clive Collier said: “To any developing business cash flow is absolutely key. They know LIMS can improve efficiencies and enable them to increase their turnover and cut costs, but finding time for the initial set-up can be difficult. Commissioning a LIMS involves a number of essentially straightforward but potentially time consuming steps, like populating the system’s database. While many customers might prefer to undertake these tasks themselves, competition for time with other day-to-day priorities in a busy lab may slow down the LIMS implementation. Of course, many smaller companies may have little or no IT resource, so based on the experiences of customers like MicroCheck, we have designed a range of rental services to help bring WinLIMS rental installations on line as quickly as possible without disrupting the work of the laboratory.”

These WinLIMS rental services include data upload, instrument interface configuration and assistance with customising reports. Many users train themselves using the teaching aids provided with WinLIMS rental, but conventional training is also available from QSI if preferred. For those who are really pressed for time a full implementation package can be provided. The WinLIMS Rental concept is still evolving, but there are now a number of companies that have invested in this approach to LIMS.

One of the first organisations to take up a WinLIMS rental contract was QTS Analytical, of East Malling, Kent, a contract laboratory whose major activity is the measurement of pesticide residues in fruit, vegetables and other foodstuffs. This UKAS-accredited laboratory uses in-house GC-MS and LC-MS procedures to investigate a typical sample load of 500 samples per month, with up to 200 determinands per sample. QTS offer an industry-leading 12 hour emergency turn-around on residue testing. Clearly, speed and accuracy of reporting are vital in this situation, and the largely manual reporting process used before WinLIMS was creating a major bottleneck. At peak times, staff were having to work unsocial hours to keep up, and the administrative load also introduced invoicing delays.

The effect of introducing WinLIMS is described by QTS Analytical proprietor Steve Gardner: “In searching for a solution to our rapidly growing need for a LIMS I was pleasantly surprised by the new concept offered by QSI, that of a rental LIMS. It offered a cost effective means of obtaining a LIMS system that was capable of meeting our exacting requirements and also offered a wide range of additional capabilities that would meet our future needs. Since going live with WinLIMS we have benefited considerably from the reporting capabilities - our reports vary greatly in format dependent on the type of testing being carried out for each customer.  WinLIMS was able to cater for this requirement straight from the box and as such has made significant time savings, 7 hours per week if not more.”

Since its introduction, WinLIMS rental has been implemented by clients in an ever- widening range of application areas. QSI’s Clive Collier added: “We now have WinLIMS Rental systems in pharmaceutical, clinical and microbiology labs, through areas like food and drink and brewing to metals analysis, the glass industry and non-destructive testing. LIMS used to be the preserve of large laboratories but we now have one client with only two staff in the laboratory. The wide client base proves that a standardised but comprehensive package like WinLIMS rental can deliver diverse applications without having to write special custom code for each client. This in turn greatly simplifies installation and commissioning. As an example, we have a WinLIMS rental client, a crop nutrition laboratory in rural East Africa, where commissioning was completed successfully without the need for any on-site support from QSI - any issues were handled remotely via our interactive support systems. I think we have a solution here that will revolutionise data and result handling in the laboratory.”

By Paul Carter. Paul is managing director of Phoenix Marcom and is marketing consultant to QSI