Orchard Software in Indiana offers Orchard Harvest LIMS, a laboratory information management system dedicated to providing operational support and streamlining with rules-based decisioning, data analytics and business intelligence, and clear interfaces.
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Thermo Fisher Watson LIMS
Score 5.0 out of 10
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Thermo Fisher Scientific offers Watson LIMS, a laboratory information management system designed to support bioanalytic studies and research.
Harvest is well suited in a lab or a reference lab of about any size. You can customize the workflow with filters and permissions to ensure that the right people have the right abilities when they need them. I would say that it is not as great for locations that have multiple remote locations without great internet. Because of the underlying technologies, latency between client and server can cause havoc.
Globally, the system is not very well suited. Lack of appropriate interfaces for instrument detectors is a good example. Watson lims can maintain sample traceability correctly however, it is clearly not designed for high throughput sample analysis. Our laboratory global efficiency significantly decreased upon Watson Lims implementation. New ''Analytical samples'' functionality was now well designed and have a lot of limitations. The Software validation provided and executed by the vendor is weak and showed major execution error also with poor documentation practice. Very disappointing.
User Interface - The software is like 25 years old, and it feels like it. They have added some buttons and links to try to make it easier, but it's not as flashy as the SaaS applications that are being built these days. It feels like there isn't a lot of time spent on refining the features, just adding more to it.
Archaic Architecture - The application use 4D for the database. This means that you can't use SQL for queries, latency is a huge issue and there isn't a hosted option. You have to have your own in-house server to run the server application.
Client is an Application - We have workstations dedicated to managing the interfaces. These workstations have to run the application as a program and can not run them as a service. This means that if you want to apply Windows updates it required manually closing and re-launching the application.
Data Mining - There are some basic reports, but they do not really allow you to build complex reports about the patients or work being performed.
Watson have a lot of things to improve. The software has a old user interface absolutely not up to the current software standard. The backend is even worst.
The software has a old user interface absolutely not up to the current software standard. The backend is even worst. The system crash regularly.
The licensing service do not works properly, half of the time we need to restart the licensing server to provide access to new users.
The process that needs to be used to allow samples analysis a result reporting is rigid and clearly not enough flexible.
Multiple excel macro were internally created to cover aspect not supported by the software.
Interface between Thermo Fisher Watson Lims and Thermo Fisher Q Exactive instrument do not works. Watson Lims cannot interface neither with current version of WinNonLin software. This is a major lack.
We were looking into changing to another LIS but they failed to get things done and we ended up staying with Orchard. We are now in the process of moving everything to Sequoia since we have grown so much as a lab. I don't have any other experience with another LIS to compare to.
The support provided by Orchard Software for Harvest allows me to not have to worry as much about the system. I can grant them access to my system and trust them to work on the issue while I work on other issues.
The automation saves a lot of time for those in the lab. There have been a few times that the lab has been down for a couple of hours and having to catch up and enter the results from the instruments manually can take the rest of the day.
The only positive impact is for client facing. Watson lims is well known in the industry and the purchase of this software increase the credibility of our organization.
The ROI is a disaster. First: The cost of the software is significantly to high, the user licences cost also contribute in the ROI disaster. Second: The implementation of watson lims significantly decrease our laboratory efficiency.
