Interfacing LIMS to Other Commercially Available Software Packages

Posted on : September 28, 2016

By Robert Benz, Sales & Marketing Director, Khemia Software Inc.

A LIMS by its name is a laboratory information management system. LIMS over the years have increased in their breadth of coverage, however, at no point is a LIMS a full accounting package or geographic information system (GIS) nor does a true LIMS replace a customized enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. A LIMS though may be very effectively interfaced with other software platforms to provide a business entity the full breadth of information and ability it requires.

We often get asked, particularly from clients who run an internal support laboratory, about additional functionality that goes far outside of the LIMS. As opposed to expanding and customizing the LIMS to areas outside of the laboratory, we discuss the ability to adjoin the LIMS with existing applications already on hand. We often explain that while we may not be the best at accounting, their existing accounting software already in place is ideal; we instead demonstrate how to push the needed data into their accounting package as needed. In internal laboratories in a production environment, often conversations on how their fully customized SAP system (http://go.sap.com/) need not be messed with come into play, but how to simply push the needed data to the LIMS and how to extract the needed data out takes center stage.

Similar examples can be seen within engineering companies that have a laboratory attached. As opposed to recreating a wheel, we commonly work with outside software packages for the field data and graphical reporting like SampleServe.com (www.SampleServe.com) from which we pull/push data to/from as it flows through the laboratory. This approach best allows each platform to do what is designed to do best.

In the end, a good LIMS is written by programmers and chemists/biologists who understand specific laboratory environments, similar to the way programmers and accountants work on accounting software, programmers and geographers work on GIS, etc. There is no substitute to having professionals within the industry write a specific software platform in conjunction with good programmers for that industry. With that in mind, there is no better way of handling operations than adjoining the programs to let each take care of what it does best.

For more information contact:
Robert Benz, rbenz@khemia.com, 843-810-2075
www.khemia.com

You may also see this article in this weeks LIMSfinder.com newsletter:
http://www.limsfinder.com/BlogDetail.aspx?id=41973_0_2_0_C