Over the years, we’ve been involved in a number of LIMS/ELN selection projects. In this new series of blog posts, we’ll take a look at some of the lessons learned from those projects.
In ancient Greece the Oracle of Delphi was a mystical seer whose prophecies could drive the decisions of kings. On her temple there were two inscriptions: “Know Thyself” and “to thine own self be true”. Those sentiments are no less true now, than they were 2500 years ago, and knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your organization, is crucial when making application selection decisions.
The key questions that every organization must ask itself when evaluating these solutions are:
- What kind of an organization do I have?
- Do I have dedicated informatics personnel to administer the application? Can I bring in a contractor for this, or am I going to rely on my lab manager to do this?
- Who is going to be responsible for configuring each assay that goes into the system?
- Who is going to be responsible for access control?
- Does my organization have its own data center, or should I use this in the cloud?
- Do we have the kind of bandwidth necessary to upload large amounts of imaging data into the cloud?
- Do I have a multi-site organization in different time zones, which might require the solution to be deployed in multiple AWS zones?
- Do I have the informatics organization necessary to build on-top of this solution? Let’s face it, no solution will address all of our needs, so how do we fill the gaps? Do we buy additional applications? Do we build custom software?
- Do the majority of the employees in my company come from academic labs, or industry? Often academic labs don’t have the budget for informatics applications, and therefore employees from academia may lack experience in making technology selections.
- Do we need to have purchasing and inventory connected to insure that reagents can be easily re-ordered?
- Is our staff used to being mobile? Do they want to roam the lab with a tablet and enter information as they go, or do they need to do data entry from a desktop computer?
- What are the critical path processes in my organization which help me get product out the door? Whether it’s drug discovery, diagnostics, service delivery or device development (or some combination thereof), knowing the steps involved, the people who perform those steps, the data they produce, and the current gaps and time consuming steps in the process is essential to a successful implementation. Ultimately, the selection process must make clear how the eLN/LIMS will support the scientific processes within the organization.
- What is your vision for your business? What kinds of capabilities do you want to have? Do you want to be a cloud-enabled business? Could augmented reality make your scientific operations more “hands free” and more efficient? How can these types of technologies position your company as an innovator that attracts the attention of investors, partners and new employees?
Read more of the ELN/LIMS Blog Post Series
Need help getting started with your ELN or LIMS project? Contact us