A Lab Management software or laboratory information management system, is a software that keeps track of data associated with samples, experiments, laboratory workflows, and instruments in order to improve lab productivity and efficiency. A lab management software functions helps in extension of your team, automating workflows and tracking all of the critical sample information, data, workflows, and QA/QC results generated by your lab each day.
A modern Lab management system has progressed from a sample-based tracking system to the lab's digital backbone. It is a tool for managing efficiency and costs. A best Lab management system does more than simply keep track of your samples, scientific data, and results. It gives you the ability to actively manage your entire lab process, from instrument maintenance and samples to people and consumables. A lab management software manages laboratory samples and associated data, standardises workflows, reduces human error, and increases efficiency.
Lab Management software are constantly evolving to meet the needs of laboratories. If you haven't looked into what a Lab Management system can do for your business, you may still think of it as a sample-based tracking system, but modern lab management systems do all of that and more. Let's go over the most important elements of a modern Lab management software:
A good Lab Management software should allow you to accession (log in) samples, record their exact location (site, lab, freezer, shelf, box, cell), and track and record each step of their journey through lab workflow you are performing. Lab Management software not only tracks the sample and it help in tracking the result at each aliquot, and provides a consolidated view at the sample, patient, project, or batch level, depending on your workflow. As the great aggregator of your data, it is important that it also tracks any changes throughout the sample lifecycle and generates a full audit trail of every action performed on each sample.
A Lab Management software will enable you to keep track of all reagents and consumables that come into your lab. It will keep track of expiration dates and restrict the use of expired goods, track recipes that include these reagents, keep track of who made them, deprecate volumes as reagents are used, and notify users when it is time to reorder. Because the Lab Management system is aware of your inventory, it can reduce over-ordering, which results in waste and increased costs, as well as eliminate unexpected reagent depletion, which causes work delays and project overruns. Perhaps more importantly, this provides traceability. If there is a problem with a specific lot of reagents, the Lab Management system will immediately identify which samples are affected and must be retested.
Lab workflows frequently include a variety of instruments, each of which generates a variety of result files that may be in different file formats. Your Lab Management software solution should be able to integrate all of these instruments and their results, eventually connecting these results to your sample records. Furthermore, Lab Management software should support some level of QC result analysis to determine which samples meet expected criteria, and then route passed samples to the next step in the workflow, while failing samples are routed back to the previous workflow step as your business rules dictate. You can also record instrument calibration results and receive reminders for scheduled preventative maintenance. While these instruments are being calibrated or maintained, they can be removed as selectable options within the Lab Management system, ensuring that technicians are not using out-of-spec instruments.
Laboratories are diversified environments that employ a wide range of instrumentation from a variety of manufacturers. Laboratories want to select the most robust instrument for their application. The difficulty arises from the fact that each instrument has its own set of protocols, methods, and workflows that must be managed. Your Lab Management software should support multiple workflows that you can deploy as needed for specific samples or projects. Or do you intend to expand your laboratory in order to incorporate a new type of instrument, equipment, or robotics? Your lab information management solution (LIMS) should allow you to quickly and easily add these workflows through configuration.
The best Lab Management solutions allow users to easily configure their own workflows and business processes in the system. To adopt and expand methods and workflows, this required custom coding in the early days of Lab Management software, which made it difficult. Today, Lab Management software allows for greater agility in the lab, and workflows can be created or modified quickly without the need for assistance from the Lab Management software provider.
Working with a modular Lab Management system allows you to create new workflows by combining components from existing workflows and adding new modules to reflect your lab's growing expertise. For example, as part of your current workflow, you already accession samples. When incorporating a new scientific method, you should be able to use the existing and well-understood accessioning module to accelerate the development of the new method.
While most labs strive to be paperless, it is critical to be able to visualise laboratory data and metrics in meaningful ways. A Lab Management software stores a lot of data about samples, reagents, instruments, workflows, and other things. A Lab Management system should also allow you to visualise data in real time in order to see the status of all samples and projects, as well as generate valuable quality control information. Is one of your instruments performing worse than the others? Could maintenance improve the overall performance of your laboratory? Lab Management software can assist you in determining this before it becomes a larger issue. Do you have a process bottleneck that is difficult to identify? Your Lab Management system reports can show you how samples are stalled at a specific step, allowing you to allocate additional resources to alleviate the sluggishness. Are you on track to meet your stated turnaround time (TAT)? A Lab Management system can generate reports and dashboards that show what percentage of samples have completed the entire workflow in the expected time, as well as where you have missed the target TAT, so you can improve your process.
It important to have the best lab management software to manage the laboratory workflow according to the decided SOP without any error. DoFort offer the best lab management software that take care of your all lab work flow and process. For more info contact us at - info@doforttech.com or comment below.
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