How LIMS Simplifies Our Lives… …and why many people are still so frustrated with it

Once I asked a guy who owned a lab:

“Do you like your LIMS?”

“No”, – he said in a low voice.

“Well, why not change it then?”

“No”, – he said a little louder.

When I pointed out the fact that a LIMS, well, simplifies the lab life, he cried:

“No! It only complicates everything… and devastates us all!”

Then he sighed and added:

“After all, nothing can be done, we still have to pay off the damn system”.

1. “LIMS makes us do nonsense!”

Holy cow! For a LIMS to be useful, you have to put some information in it!

People expect automation to be like this: you turn it on and go away, and when you come back there is a large stack of money waiting for you. But, surprisingly, things don’t work like that.

Vendors promise you comfort, relaxation, and a pleasant feeling of the world, and you still have to enter darned data. More data than you used to input when you kept paper logs. Yes, LIMS gives much more info, too, but you expected it would do it on its own, and it doesn’t!

Again, when you filled out paper forms using instructions, there was no question of interoperability.

Now you have to transmit data electronically. To make it work, you fulfill new conditions, such as entering data into specific fields and always doing it the same way. You don’t feel like your life has gotten easier. On the contrary, it feels more complicated. Why solve dumb puzzles that you used to hand out to others?

How dull!

2. “LIMS makes us slaves of bureaucracy!”

Or here, for example, security. It’s more or less clear how to manage risks when transferring data on paper: it’s enough that the courier doesn’t lose the briefcase. In the electronic world, you are surrounded by Big Bad Guys. If they steal something and patients suffer, then you are the ones to blame. The numerous government regulations adopted to protect personal data worsen your mental condition even more: they cost you money and require a lot of extra effort that begins to take precedence over your core business. There is a strange feeling of turning into a robot. You just wanted to run the lab business you love and know, not deal with this endless regulation crap.

How unfair!

3. “LIMS makes us too transparent!”

You remember this nightmare, the one where you are standing in front of the class on the blackboard, and then your trousers dramatically fall to your ankles. This is more or less how the lab feels when it implements a LIMS.

LIMS pulls back the curtain revealing the man in the machine. There are many different things that you may do out of tradition or just because it is convenient and not scary. These things reflect problems that you don’t talk about out loud.

For example, some doctors prescribe tests without using the principle of choosing wisely. It is well known that insurance companies do not pay for tests that are not covered by clinical guidelines. What does the lab do? It doesn’t want to spoil relations with these doctors, so it quietly performs such tests at its own expense, “spreading” the costs over other tests. Hush-hush and no one sees these violations.

But then LIMS appears, trousers fall, and the CFO sees the structure of costs. Everybody’s horrified, and everybody feels bad. Who’s to blame? LIMS.

How frustrating!

4. “If something happens, all is lost”.

In the previous examples, it was the employees and the medical director who lost their sense of comfort. Now, the IT specialist joins them. He, too, can no longer sleep well. What if my system gets hacked? What if the internet goes down and the system is cloud-based? What happens to us if the whole thing breaks?

In the good old days, we used to engage hundreds of people running back and forth with test tubes before, but now robots do everything. But if the LIMS breaks down, there’s no one to run these tests around until it’s fixed.

Ugh, how scary!

5. “LIMS makes us overly dependent on itself!”

What about the lab owner? While his employees are suffering, is he happy? Of course not! The owner wakes up in the middle of the night with the most unpleasant thought: the choice of LIMS determines the competitiveness of his business.

What if the choice is made strategically wrong? What if we made a mistake and underestimated some of the external factors and our LIMS will not respond to quickly? There’s no going back, is there?

What a despair!

So now everyone is doomed to live out this waking nightmare? Or not?

Not really!

1. Choose the right LIMS

Of course, not all LIMS simplify lives. Knowing this, you should spend the resources to look at many differing systems to choose the right one before settling on a LIMS. Talk to vendors, and focus not on price, not on popularity, but instead on the extent to which the people who use it understand how to make its processes better. If vendors understand lab diagnostics, it’s not a sin to pay for a LIMS just to gain access to their expertise.

Pay attention to the usability. There are archaic systems that make people break down and cry. An uncomfortable interface indicates the vendor’s care. Do they understand us? Is it a flexible interface that will not cause unnecessary frustration?

Do not hesitate to discuss doubts with the vendor so that your users do not waste extra time and attention, you need them less tired and making fewer mistakes.

2. Don’t expect miracles

We will have more fun if our expectations are realistic.

No, a LIMS will not solve all the problems of your laboratory processes. And yes, it needs some information entered into it. Move gradually, changing and facilitating all routine processes as you go. Someday you will achieve full automation, but even then you’ll have to scan papers at the pre-analytical stage. The purpose of any system is not to totalize everything, but to get the effect of scale. This effect comes from automating repetitive processes of lab routine. And the perfect, well-chosen LIMS does just that. It gives you that pleasant feeling that you’ve got much more useful information than you put into it. As a result, you will not only save time and money but also increase comfort.

3. Optimize processes first

IT people love the aphorism, “If you automate chaos, you get automated chaos.” Automation alone does not add structure and quality to your processes. Work on adjusting your structure before you start implementing LIMS.

No, it’s not OK to have hidden costs. And yes, buying a LIMS is a great reason to review and optimize your lab. It is this revision that improves your life first and foremost, and the system only adds comfort and speed and helps you adapt faster.

At first glance, the transparency of LIMS can confuse us by making us see what used to be reassuringly murky. But it also allows us to anticipate obstacles in advance and avoid them.

Become LIMS compliant. Do not tweak the system to fit your mess, instead look at how to maximize the system’s potential and change your processes and attitudes accordingly. Then you will not be ashamed, but become proud of your transparency.

4. Love the data and use the LIMS to assure your quality

Yes, you have to think over many new regulations and get accustomed to new processes. But you’ll be fully rewarded by the new level-up in quality you receive.

LIMS is one of the pillars on which the quality of a modern laboratory stands. Automated systems came along with test regulations that revolutionized quality control in laboratories. A couple decades later instrument-linked software emerged. Very often LIMS optimizes and makes the middleware work most efficiently. Without LIMS, automated instruments are not sexy at all!

Many labs don’t fully utilize the analytical capabilities of LIMS, so they can’t fully understand what they are getting for their effort. By using an analytical approach to managing our lab, we may spend more resources at the moment, but we will acquire many  more benefits than we could have imagined.

The most important thing here is the data use. With LIMS, we can analyze and generate much more information than before. Mind-boggling possibilities for analyzing and generating data open up that are worth taking full advantage of.

If we are to survive in the marketplace for long, our job is not to simply execute a test, but to allow a doctor to manage patients in the best way possible. To help her do so we must perform tests well, not only from an analytical point of view but also as an information service. Thus we add value to the treatment process.

For example, pharmacogenetic tests have no value at all without more information. If you only write that a certain gene is present, that’s not enough to make a decision: the doctor needs to know whether to increase the dose of the drug, decrease it, or not give it at all. The lab can provide the doctor with this information, but so far only a few labs have learned it. There is a lot of room for improvement!

Finding, learning, and processing additional information takes time, but the skill is not in ignoring it, but in using it.

So, love the data that LIMS gives you, and don’t consider it redundant. It may be a challenge, but the payoff is well worth it.

5. Outsource the non-essentials

Let’s go back and look at the picture where everybody is dull and frustrated because they are busy with some nonsense. Yes, lab people have some cause when they say they hate doing IT work and run to and fro thanks to some dull security regulation. After all, you are in the lab business, and you deserve to do what you like, not what you are forced to. You want to focus on what is most important: producing quality laboratory tests.

The thing I want to tell you is that LIMS can help you do just that. Or rather, its vendor can – if they agree to take over some of your processes.

For example, if you’re installing an in-house system, you’ll have to think about how to buy servers, what backup looks like, and so on. But, if you buy a cloud-based system, it will be Microsoft or Amazon who think of you. You’re paying to remove unnecessary IT tasks from the center of your attention and concentrate on what’s important.

You can also find a vendor who can partially undertake IT security. A vendor is an IT company, so they will be happy to do that, because it’s their job! They have a more profound understanding of both security and infrastructure provisioning.

Rid yourself of everything that seems dull. Outsource it and focus on what you consider to be your core competencies. And of course, don’t hesitate to discuss all this with the LIMS vendor.