?? Original Research Paper 37

Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems: Laboratory Information Management, 13 (1991) 31-41 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam

LIMS? What about the ‘I’? *

Mike Murphy Commerce and Industry Division, Sema Group Systems Limited, Norcliffe House, Station Road, Wilmslow,

Cheshire, SK9 1 B U (UK)

(Received 14 September 1990; accepted 20 November 1990)

Abstract

Murphy, M., 1991. LIMS? What about the ‘I’?, Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems: Lclboratory Information Manage- ment, 13: 37-41.

This article considers the true place of laboratory information management systems (LIMS) in the total information structure of companies or other organisations, and the reasons why it is never reached. This necessitates an examination of the reasons which prevent systems from achieving strategic status, the direct impact those reasons have on the type of systems developed and a review of the methods by which a truly strategic LIMS can be defined. The purpose of the discussion is to highlight the benefits to all involved parties of implementing a system to meet strategic ends, and these are reviewed by way of conclusion.

INTRODUCTION

It may be that some readers might find the title of this paper a little obscure, so to elaborate: it is the author’s conviction that many of the so-called LIMS installed to date are not laboratory informa- tion management systems, but merely laboratory management systems. The author recognises that many people will regard this as a rather conten- tious statement which requires some justification.

?? Presented at the session on Laboratory Information Man- agement Systems, Analyticon ‘90, London, UK, September 1990.

SYSTEMS WITH A LOW INFORMATION CONTENT

The first reason for making this assertion is that the laboratory is often seen as being less of an integral part of the business it serves than is actually justified by the facts. The author suspects that this tendency arises from a lack of knowledge, whereby the scientists neither really understand nor are particularly interested in the wider busi- ness, whilst their non-scientific colleagues - be they business people, engineers, computing profes- sionals or whatever - do not understand the work and language of the scientists. This less than perfect communication results, as in any human situation, in a degree of mutual suspicion; conse- quently each group tends to go its own way. This

092%5281/91/$03.50 0 1991 - Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. All rights reserved

38 Laboratory Information Management H

is not the invariable situation, but is often seen in organisations in which computing resources come under the umbrella of Production or Finance, and no specialist scientific computing function exists.

The second part of the justification for the original premise is the understandable tendency of managers generally to restrict their attention to the areas directly under their control. Laboratory Managers are no less prone to this tendency than any others, but the situation is exacerbated by this general lack of communication between the scien- tific and non-scientific parts of an organisation.

THIS AFFECTS SYSTEM DESIGNS

Perhaps because of the above tendency it is very common for laboratory computer systems to be defined solely in terms of the laboratory itself, and rare for them to be defined in terms of the information flow that should take place between the laboratory and the outside world. As a result attention is concentrated on such matters as sam- ple tracking, internal worksheets, data acquisition, authorisation of data and so forth. This commonly means that a company will spend a significant sum of money to realise benefits which are re- stricted solely to a relatively small part of the organisation.

SURELY, THERE MUST BE A BETTER WAY?

Insofar as the system is intended merely as a reaction to the twin pressures of increasing workloads and reducing availability of qualified staff, or to a perceived need to cut running costs, such a procedure may be defensible. The author suggests however that while these considerations may provide the initial impetus towards com- puterisation such an approach will never result in making the best return on that investment. An additional investment in taking a strategic ap- proach to LIMS will markedly improve the overall return, as will now be shown.

WHY DO WE HAVE LABORATORIES?

Few laboratories, even those involved in pure research, exist in an organisational vacuum. Sam- ples are almost never taken merely for the sake of carrying out an analysis except, perhaps, in educa- tional laboratories where the analytical technique or the result is an end in itself. The justification for the existence of most laboratories must there- fore be in the information they supply to their parent organisations. Information which needs to be properly integrated into the organisation’s total information base if the best use is to be made of it. If maximising the integration of the laboratory into its parent organisation is important to the service provided by the laboratory then the same must be true for the information technology ap- plied to the support of that laboratory.

INFORMATION VERSUS DATA

It will be noticed that the author has con- centrated on the term ‘information’, not ‘data’. This is quite deliberate. The reason why the com- puting industry today tends to talk of information technology rather than data processing is more than mere marketing. The difference between the two is that information is data which is placed into some sort of context, and which is interpreted in a manner which makes it useful [l]. This differ- entiation is clearly recognised in the R&D world, where raw data are used to produce reports and draw conclusions, and the same principle should be applied to the implementation of computer systems [2].

SO WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO?

It is clear that if the computer systems installed in laboratories are to deal in information they must be integrated into the rest of the organisa- tional information structure. They must be capa- ble of feeding into that structure the information which the organisation requires. This demands that the system be designed to achieve strategic ends of benefit to the organisation as a whole, not

?? Original Research Paper 39

merely the tactical ends of smoothing somewhat the management and control of the laboratory (beneficial though that may be). Although it is tempting to argue that only this type of system truly merits the title laboratory information management system it may be safer to refer to it as a strategic rather than a tactical LIMS.

Having identified the objective the next step is to decide how to achieve it. The advantages of a strategic approach are, of course, so plainly ap- parent that there should be no problem with this. The first requirement of defining a strategic LIMS is to achieve a consensus between the laboratory and its ‘clients’. This requires a significant degree of cooperation between the two, and a conscious effort to overcome the communications difficulties which may exist - not always a straightforward matter. If, for example, the perception of the laboratory is that its function is ‘to analyse sam- ples’ (admittedly an extreme case) a degree of radical thinking may be involved.

This is not the place to attempt a detailed treatment of the mechanics for completing such an exercise. The important thing is to consider the benefits to the laboratory and its staff, as well as to the wider organisation. This requires a brief discussion of the milestones along this road in order to provide some framework from which to hang these benefits.

CONSIDER THE INFORMATION GENERATED

The first necessity for any LIMS with preten- sions to strategic status is to agree the function of the laboratory within the wider organisation - generally in terms of the information it needs to provide. This involves more than simply catalogu- ing the reports which are currently produced. It will often be appropriate to look at the reasons for the existence of those reports and their content; it may also be important to consider the timing. Equally one ought not to restrict the consideration to data and information which is provided at the moment; there may very well be additional infor- mation which the laboratory’s clients need or may need in the future, there may also be information which the laboratory feels it could provide if only

someone would ask them for it. Information con- tent is not the only criterion at this point, presen- tation may be equally (or sometimes even more) important. Presentation does not mean relatively minor, detailed issues of report format (although they may be critical where specific regulatory re- quirements exist); of greater importance are such matters as timing and delivery method which might have a significant effect on the way any system is designed. One example is that if a particular re- port is required on the day of its production an interface to a telex or fax link may be more appropriate than producing high quality printed output which is subsequently delayed by the vagaries of the postal system. One thing which often differentiates information from data is time- liness - and the goal is an information system.

WHAT ABOUT THE INFORMATION COMING IN?

There is an obvious danger in concentrating solely on the information required from the laboratory, which is that the laboratory may be unable to meet that requirement for lack of infor- mation coming in. Thus one can find a community of very happy users facing a laboratory manager who is very unhappy indeed. Naturally if the laboratory is going to meet the requirements placed upon it by the previous exercise the next stage must be to determine what information it requires in order to do so. These two investigations are, in fact, one, and need to be completed cooperatively by the laboratory, its clients and any third-party facilitators who may be involved. The end result of this investigation should be a comprehensive statement of the interfaces the laboratory should have with the rest of the organisation; it will almost certainly be different from the interfaces it currently has. This exercise will repay dividends in its own right, even if it goes no further and no computer system is deemed necessary for its sup- port. This is, perhaps, unlikely in today’s world. The completion of the investigation just described will probably leave the laboratory with a very satisfied set of clients. It would, of course, be too much to hope that the satisfaction would be unan- imous, and this should not be expected. It will

40 Laboratory Information Management ??

undoubtedly be the case that certain people’s pet wishes have to be excluded either for reasons of cost, or feasibility.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE LABORATORY _.

Notwithstanding all the valuable work carried out to this point, the management of the labora- tory may be left with the feeling that, even with this wealth of incoming information and a clear set of required deliverables, they are little better off beyond having improved the justification for installing the sort of system they desired in the first place. This problem is the next to be dealt with, which reminds us of the fact that no strategy is worth anything without a tactical plan for its achievement. We are better off than previously, in the sense that we know what our tactics should be aimed at, but we must now determine the tactics themselves.

The means of solving this problem is to start to consider both the processes which currently go on within the laboratory and those which will need to be put in place to meet the requirements now defined for it. This stage of the operation is not one of defining the computer system itself, it will very likely be at a higher level corresponding to the flow of information through the laboratory and the procedures necessary to the proper management and security of that information. The process is one, in fact, of defining the environment in which the LIMS is going to operate and the facilities it will have to provide in order to allow the laboratory itself to meet its defined objectives. The virtual certainty that these processes will in- clude such things as sample tracking, data acquisi- tion, report production, costing, etc. means that the hard pressed laboratory manager will actually get the functionality he desired in the first place. What it also means is that he will get these facili- ties in a form which allows the laboratory to be managed for the greater good of the organisation as a whole. This very fact is likely to make it easier to justify the system commercially, and thereby to get a system at all.

THE OUTCOME OF THE STRATEGIC DEFINITION PROCESS

The completion of this strategic definition pro- cess will deliver a comprehensive statement of what a LIMS needs to look like in order to meet the objectives of the organisation in which it is to operate. This statement will identify the informa- tion which the system needs to draw on in order to meet these objectives, the processes through which that information must pass, and the infor- mation it will deliver to the outside world. How- ever, there is still a long way to go before the system comes into use, as the stages of detailed definition, procurement, implementation and validation have still to be gone through before the system can go live. These exercises however are outside the scope of this paper.

LOOK AHEAD!

One other issue is fundamental to defining a system which merits the term ‘strategic’. This is to avoid the trap of defining the system which the organisation needs today. Clearly it is not possible to be categoric about the needs that will arise over the lifetime of a system, but equally there is no point in building a strait-jacket which will con- strain the development of the laboratory or the total organisation. It is important to remember that the working life of the system is almost certain to extend beyond the present laboratory organisation, and the business conditions upon which it is based. Systems should not be made dependent upon current conditions or personnel, any more than upon the continued use of particu- lar instruments or analytical techniques. Nonethe- less, care needs to be exercised in the search for flexibility, to keep the requirement within the bounds of the possible - many projects have foundered because the users have demanded total, absolute flexibility (generally at zero cost), and have suffered disappointment and disillusion. It is the controlled employment of imagination, to- gether with an eye to flexibility and a knowledge of the direction in which the organisation wishes to develop, that will help to ensure the extended

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life of the system, which is a desirable aim in its own right.

SUMMARY

In conclusion the benefits believed to come from a serious attempt to embed the ‘I’ firmly into the term LIMS are reviewed. They are the follow- ing:

1. The external objectives of the system will be clearly identified from the outset, which means that the clients of the laboratory should not be disappointed with the results.

2. The intra-departmental objectives of the sys- tem will be derived from those external objectives, allowing the laboratory management to satisfy their clients and thereby improve the esteem in which both they and their staff are held within the organisation.

3. Proper identification of the functions re- quired of the system means that a framework is established within which the remainder of the project can be properly controlled.

4. The functions provided by the system to meet both the internal and external objectives will be the right ones, having been deliberately defined for that purpose. The system should therefore be satisfying to use, freeing the laboratory staff from much of the routine (particularly administrative) drudgery and providing the improvements in ef-

ficiency which probably prompted the search for a LIMS in the first place.

5. The fact that the system installed meets the true (rather than the initially perceived) needs of the laboratory is likely to have a beneficial effect on the science through more time being available for truly scientific work leading to better quality results. This will not only improve the morale of the laboratory but establish an upward spiral of achievement which will benefit both the labora- tory and its clients.

6. Built-in flexibility and scope for enhance- ment will steepen this spiral, thereby increasing the return on the investment both of time and money.

There is no doubt that an ‘up-front’ investment in defining a LIMS from a strategic perspective, putting the ‘I’ back into LIMS, is worthwhile. The question before LIMS developers today is not “can we afford it?“, but “can we afford not to do it?“.

REFERENCES

D.C. Mattes, Data or information management: strategic distinctions, Chemometrics and Intelligent Luboraroty Sys- terns: Laboratory Information Management, 13 (1991) 3-13. R.D. McDowall. Introduction to laboratory information management systems, in R.D. McDowall (Editor), Laboru- tory Information Management Systems - Concepts, Integra- tmn and Implementution, Sigma Press, Wilmslow, 1987. pp. 9-11.