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LIMS Management

Should You Integrate LIMS Data with a Data Warehouse or Use Data Federation?

Every lab manager knows that good data is essential for advancing science — whether it’s to track trends, confirm or disprove hypotheses, or compare results across experiments. But what’s the best way to ensure decisions are based on good data in your lab environment?   Modern clinical diagnostic labs generate a wealth of valuable data through the use of numerous […]

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How to Know It’s Time to Replace Your Lab Information Management Software

“Do we need a new laboratory information management system (LIMS) or can we make do with our current system?” This is a question we often hear from labs struggling to make their existing software do what they need. “Replace the LIMS” is generally not the answer labs want to hear. That’s because a new implementation can be costly and time-consuming. […]

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Iterating a Validated Assay? You Need Effective Change Management

Laboratories face frequent changes. Whether you’re implementing new workflows or updating an existing one, adding an instrument, iterating on a validated assay, or optimizing processes to keep up with market conditions or advances in technology, one thing is certain — change is inevitable. But that doesn’t make it easy. Humans naturally resist change. We prefer tasks that are comfortable and […]

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Barcodes in the Lab: How to Maximize Efficiency and Reduce Errors

Barcoding is extremely useful in a lab environment. It lets you quickly and automatically identify and track items like samples, plates, and reagents. But implementing a lab barcode system is not as simple as charging up a scanner and getting to work. To be effective, the scanning solution should be integrated with your laboratory information management system (LIMS). That means […]

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How a Regulated Lab Ended Up Owning the Code of a Commercial LIMS

A surprising number of labs today still use pen and paper to manage lab samples, analysis, and reporting. But for forward-looking labs, a laboratory information management system (LIMS) offers a way to work more effectively through standardized workflows, tests, and procedures. That was the conclusion reached by the shareholders of an environmental contract lab. Recognizing that if they continued to […]

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Addressing Molecular Diagnostic LIS Functionality Gaps: A JMD Response

In a 2018 article in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics (JMD), the authors — Charles Myers, Matthew Swadley, and Alexis Carter — identified key gaps in functionality in laboratory information systems (LIS) for molecular labs. To continue the conversation, we collaborated with the Cleveland Clinic’s Molecular Pathology Section lab team on a response. In our article published on the JMD […]

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Why and How You Should Automate Workflow Tests for Clarity LIMS

In clinical diagnostic laboratories, end-to-end testing of complex LIMS workflows is a critical part of the laboratory validation process. Performing these tests manually takes a Herculean effort. They’re hugely time-consuming and prone to error. Automated testing is an obvious solution, but these tests can also be expensive and take considerable time to create. That’s why we developed a reliable and […]

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Managing a LIMS Implementation in a Dynamic, Regulated Environment

Once you’ve selected your laboratory information management system (LIMS), it’s time to implement it within your lab’s software environment. A critical part of this process for regulated labs is validating the LIMS and ensuring requirements traceability. In a nutshell, to meet regulatory requirements, your lab needs to be able to: Show that the software does what it was intended to […]

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Future-Proofing Your NGS Clinical Diagnostic Lab & LIMS

In my previous post, I described the complex challenges NGS Clinical Diagnostic laboratories face because of legacy software. To recap, these include limitations in usability and efficiency, higher costs than labs generally understand, the difficulties that arise when you need to replace key personnel, and the lack of specialized software expertise in internal development teams. For laboratory and technical leads […]

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