BlazeLIMS - Automating Laboratory Software

LIMS automation, integration, and optimization provides multiple benefits:

• Tangible labor savings, often 20-40% of lab workload.
• Reduced errors, delays and rework, faster turnaround, improved throughput, and better utilization of instrument, reagent and human resources.
• Faster problem solving, assured data integrity and regulatory compliance.
• Detect process drift or off-spec quality sooner and avoid product waste, with major savings.
• Respond more effectively to business changes (new products, employee turnover, new risks and threats, etc.)
• Improve work environment, reduce turnover and burnout.

• Laboratories are complex organic operations with an intense focus on information, and with many interrelated moving parts. As such they demand unrelenting attention to insure operational excellence. LIMS automation and integration are a natural to effect a step change in operational effectiveness for this kind of environment.
• Many current trends such as turnover of personnel, working remotely, increased demands for quality, greater risk for failures, ever growing competition, etc. demand the managed digital backbone and transformation for the quality function that LIMS provide.
• The impact of laboratory effectiveness extends out into the entire enterprise information and service chain in ever expanding ways. As a result, there is a major potential for LIMS to make a dramatic contribution to the overall system, in ways that have not traditionally been appreciated or realized.
• The small to medium sized enterprise is impacted in the same ways as the Fortune 100 company. LIMS benefits for such laboratories are increasingly critical for business success, and today they are within reach even with the more limited resources.

Laboratory Information Management Systems are a mature technology, with their origins over 35 years ago. Until recently and because of the high cost ($300K and up) and specialized nature of LIMS technology and implementation, the dominant users of LIMS have been the large enterprise with centralized application management resources. The drivers have been three fold, the demands of regulatory agencies, enterprise growth requiring higher lab capacity, and a major stake in maintaining quality production and reducing waste.

That has steadily changed with expanded functional/benefit value, reduced prices, and innovations such as cloud hosting. For example, a BlazeLIMS system today starts at $30K, which makes LIMS attractive for labs of almost any industry, function and size.

A comprehensive LIMS such as BlazeLIMS will manage laboratory workflow steps and resources to whatever extent is suitable as controlled by the configuration of tables to define the parameters and rules. This diagram illustrates workflow processes and resources that may be involved depending on the type of lab and extent to which LIMS management is warranted. While a LIMS implementation may initially employ only a few of these features, it is not unusual to expand use over time.

In industry-wide surveys, LIMS users report that the biggest challenge in using their LIMS is disconnected or “stovepipe” systems that are not integrated. Blaze laboratory data analysis software provides configurable seamless integration among the many LIMS functions but also with other key enterprise systems. Some examples are:

• Instrument integration for everything from simple instruments (e.g. balances) to complex analyzers at the batch and QC level, eliminating costly transcription.
• Round trip integration with ERP/MES systems (e.g. SAP) to trigger sample logging and receive back usage decisions and results.
• Integration with enterprise document management systems to provide current SOP’s, etc.
• Integration with third party instrument and equipment maintenance and validation systems.
• Integration with systems that manage master records (e.g. customers, products, specifications).
• Integration with order and invoicing systems (e.g. contract labs).

It is not unusual for a LIMS acquisition team to miss the high value of enterprise system integration, but working with Blaze Systems will open the door to a cost effective seamless integration across your enterprise early in the planning stage to boost the benefits.

Blaze Systems employs a LIMS acquisition and implementation methodology and process that establishes a continuum of mutual information exchange, dialogs, demos, and other engagement activities from which evolves an evergreen joint picture of what a LIMS implementation will be like for a particular enterprise, and a plan for optimal implementation. The critical factors that make this process succeed are:

• The process is interactive, iterative, and flexible and thus facilitates mutual discovery and understanding of the key issues, while operating within the available customer resources for engagement.
• The process provides a melding together of critical experience and growing understanding from both organizations into a plan built to succeed without awkward late discovery problems.
• From the very beginning we provide a strategic workflow-based pre-planning across the quality function to define critical needs, set priorities, take a long term view of goals, avoid less valuable and costly rabbit trails.
• Information exchange and targeted demos provide a drill down to actually see and feel the key provisions for success and insure an efficient training and configuration process without false starts and miss-applied efforts.
• A clear picture of resources and metrics associated with configuration is developed, taking into account automated tools for bulk loading and more.
• The implementation process is optimized to optimally use customer resources of personnel, time and money, leveraging the exchange of lab information and pre-configuration developed during the acquisition process.