Twelve Dreams of LIMS

What do we want from LIMS? No, let’s rephrase that: what would we want from LIMS if we had no constraints?

Let’s assume that everything is possible and go from there.

And then let’s take the approach of management: to achieve something impossible in the future, we need to first visualize what it looks like, then backtrack and try to understand what steps we have to take to get closer to that bright future.

When people talk about their dreams, they often limit themselves too much. And they’re not thinking about the future but something as cold as yesterday’s soup. “If I were king, the straw I sleep on would always be fresh!” The idea of sleeping on something more convenient doesn’t come to mind. Or they immediately say that they can’t believe their dreams: “I would like to participate in 4 meetings at once, but I know it’s impossible”. But what if something new is invented and it will really become possible?

Let’s remove all imaginary barriers and believe that absolutely everything is possible. We can dream about how our perfect lab will look in both broad strokes and in the minute details.

The first dream: boundaries

We perceive only objects that have boundaries. For example, we all know where the boundaries of a cat are, its ears and tail. And even a cell under a microscope has a membrane maintaining homeostasis. It’s easy to forget that the boundaries of any object are a convention. But what about the air we breathe? Its nearly imperceptible borders don’t make it any less real or vital for life. If we think boldly, the LIMS of the future is a fuzzy system with no clear boundaries. Like the air pumping through the vents, it deals with all spheres that affect the lab; all its beneficiaries and users. It reaches into other systems and lets them into itself in return.

Systems that have no boundaries have some serious advantages.

Having no boundary between EMR and LIMS vastly improves our interactions with physicians. If the LIMS can be a serviceable patient portal, we can communicate that much more effectively with the patient. The dream LIMS is a system with blurred boundaries and the possibility of integration, focused on getting everyone involved in a relevant way.

The second dream: the elimination of routine

No one likes doing routines. So far, people haven’t learned how to get creative with routine or even how to dream about improving it. That’s why the dream LIMS allows us to shift all routine operations onto the system, leaving us to think only about the unconventional, the creative, the philosophical, and, if necessary, the heroic. If you look closely, this can also be called a dream of professional recognition. And not only among lab personnel but among doctors in general. Medical professionals, as you know, are highly educated and capable of performing great deeds. Unshackling them from monotonous routine will allow them to directly counsel fellow clinicians in various specialties, and more. That’s satisfaction you can’t put a price tag on. 

The third dream: adaptability

The LIMS of our dreams is very adaptive. It can shift gears to the present moment, no matter how drastically that moment and context changes in time and space. Such a LIMS knows how to adapt to context, understand what you need on the fly, and incorporate that context into its actions. You may prefer to choose specialized systems that better navigate your problems. But a dream LIMS understands different conditions and adjusts as needed. What if you want to reconfigure?

The fourth dream: speed

When we need to answer a question, we want to take some time to think about it. Time gives us a margin of safety: we won’t make a mistake if we take our time. But when we look at a LIMS, we want it to fly at the speed of light, or if it can, a little faster. When the system is slow, it is unproductive and wastes our time. So we dream of a LIMS that is capable of moving even faster than we might need.

The fifth dream: forgiveness

We dream of a LIMS that is not too demanding. We don’t like characters who poke into mistakes and ridicule us. But we also dislike people who don’t care about results. So LIMS, if we have made a mistake, must be able to recognize it, find it, and forgive it.

A system that simply broadcasts your mistakes and does not allow you to fix them for achievable results is not a dream system. We dream of an approach where if I did something wrong, the system would gently but confidently inform me of the error and show what I needed to change.

The sixth dream: money

Let’s depart from the principle of complete freedom for a moment. A system can be cheap, but it’s hard to believe a free system can provide adequate quality. Such dreams never come true. But the price should not be offensive. It must be easy to swallow. The most important thing when it comes to price is value: we need to maximize the potential to develop while keeping the price tag to a minimum. It is not a sin to dream about such a thing!

The dream of money is always a dream of freedom because wealth (resources, potential) allows us to operate independently and free from the demands of banks and creditors. The dream of profit does not contradict ethics: it confidently leads our laboratory along a route that allows us to help more patients better.

The seventh dream: mind reading

We want the system to be controlled, if not by the power of thought, then by voice or something else equally organic. When we already know what we need, we want the system to know it immediately too, and without putting in the extra effort to explain. It would be nice if there were no barriers at all between the person and the system.

Remember that man with the implanted neurochip playing chess? We need something as close to that as possible. (And at no extra cost.)

The interface is a fortress wall between the user and the system. It’s inconvenient simply because that person was not the one to  create it. It would be nice if the user could build the interface and shape the system to be as convenient as possible for them. Even in our dreams, though, we are all different. That is not a problem, just something to take into account. To make a system convenient for all kinds of people, we need one that is user friendly for everyone.

The eighth dream: consistency and homogeneity of the system

Besides the absence of external boundaries, we dream of taking away internal boundaries too. Now, any LIMS is a collection of modules that perform various functions. But in the dream, today you can use this functionality for ordering, tomorrow for pricing, and the day after to evaluate quality. There is no rigid correlation between structure and function. Functions should be evenly distributed and used differently at different moments.

The ninth dream: flexibility

People are changeable. And they change things around them from time to time.

We also want LIMS to change. We dream that the system naturally evolves over time. If you are a  LIMS developer, the hardest part is often explaining your system’s capabilities to new users. It would be nice if people could figure it out for themselves and then make any adjustments as needed.

We also want the system to cope with the changing flow of the marketplace and have adaptive capacity, different capabilities in different situations, and with no queues. The system should rebuild and update itself based on the information it collects, and it should not generate a queue.

The tenth dream: a sense of control

We dream of feeling that the process in our hands is controllable and obedient. No test tube gets lost because we know exactly where it is. We don’t like stress and we want to anticipate everything. We want a “situation room” where we can quickly get all the info in times of crisis;  one location where information from various sources is collected and centralized.

Additionally, we like to have information about the whereabouts of anything localized in our space. To keep our vision of the future alive and on track, we need to understand all the information stored in our system and how it works within the device. 

The eleventh dream: care

People working in healthcare are more caring than the average person. We want the results we get from the system to be precise for every patient.

We cannot yet predict which test result will be decisive and which will not, but we can dream. Suppose the system knows which test should be performed every time. That would immediately lift the burden of worry and inevitable guilt off our shoulders. Some might contend that worry is a professional duty and can’t be dreamt away. But just because a better world might not seem possible doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive for it.

The twelfth dream: utility

It sits somewhere next to caring. We don’t want to do busywork that isn’t much use to anyone or is required for some bureaucrat as a pure formality. It is much more satisfying to know that you are saving a person’s life, not just checking boxes for protocols and regulations.

It would be nice if LIMS takes care of the mindless formalities of our work. For our  purposes, this deals with prescribing tests and their subsequent interpretation. The man who dreamed of a brain-to-brain loop smiles at us from the 80’s. By integrating the activities of everyone using LIMS into the patient’s clinical passway his dream might finally be realized.

Looking over all twelve of our dreams, we can see that we dream not so much of the distant future but of the close one. We can see the seeds of these dreams in reality now.

All dreams can come true if we have the courage to follow them!