LabWare LIMS from the company of the same name in Delaware is offered as an enterprise class laboratory information management system, touting feature breadth and its all-encompassing functionality.
N/A
Thermo Fisher SampleManager LIMS
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
Thermo Fisher Scientific supports laboratory research with supplies and equipment but also software; the Thermo Fisher SampleManager LIMS is a widely used laboratory information management system dedicated to data and resource management, as well as automation and operational support.
While being an active user at MTF, LIMS was great in being able to complete testing and other daily tasks that would have taken much longer without this system. It enabled a great overall satisfaction to be able to pinpoint who performed each task based on time stamping and avoided many errors regarding lot numbers, expiration dates, and equipment IDs. Thus, being able to validate and report data out to other departments was ALOT faster, which is highly important being that much of our testing was heavily time sensitive and crucial to sustaining life. However, although LIMS improved the companies overall effectiveness and efficiency, it had some minor issues that created more than one problem. Being that I am no longer employed at MTF, time studies performed utilizing LIMS while testing resulted in the loss of five positions within the laboratory. It's great that it's so fast, but caused controversy by eliminating employees who were highly proficient while using the LIMS software. Also during usage, it would crash numerous times, which would either delay the input of data or completely wipe it out. On several occasions, we risked having to declare deviations on the fact that data was permanently deleted and never to be able to be retained again. This also resulted in a loss of millions of dollars due to tissue and bone samples being thrown away because there was no data to support they were able to be used in surgeries.
One of the strengths of this program, as previously stated, is to track your sample through the entire testing process, from log-in to results reporting.
It is also handy to generate reports of sample results using the LabWare LIMS program.
LabWare LIMS provides a great way to preserve testing results electronically for future needs.
The management of Event Triggers can stand to use some improvement. Especially when it comes to using the "DEFAULT" template event versus the specific template event.
Licenses are considered "concurrent". But LabWare does not have a feature that tells me (at any level) what my peak license usage is. For example ... if I own 100 licenses, LabWare will tell me at any given time how many licenses I am using. But it won't tell me at the end of the day, week, or month, what my peak usage was. So if I own 100 licenses, and I look at my usage right now, it might say I am using 50 licenses out of 100. Does this mean I have 50 too many licenses? Probably not. I just need a way of telling what my peak usage is so that if I want to roll LabWare out to another site, do I need to buy more licenses? Or will my 100 cover for it?
Importing data into static data tables is not well done in LabWare ... or even available. I can do it outside of LabWare with database management tools such as TOAD. But it is up to me to make sure all the tables and columns are populated correctly. It would be nice to have a feature within LabWare to do import data (from Excel spreadsheet for example) directly into some of the main tables.
LIMS can be an extremely slow system if not updated to the most current version, which can also cause the system to crash in the midst of recording/testing.
Disables certain features to be accessible depending on user status.
Does not always adhere to set protocols or standards made for specific data input.
Thermo Fisher Scientific LIMS is fantastic in that it has a wide range to store and change data regarding instrumentation, reagents, equipment, materials, and testing layouts. Information can be backed up for quite some time, which is great in the instance that data needs to be pulled immediately, regardless when it was last accessed. It also enables testing to follow a better flow through following the way in which the set up is displayed within the LIMS system.
