Why Every Modern Lab Requires a LIMS for Sample Tracking
A Lab’s Journey from Excel to a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS)
Over the last several years, the team at Third Wave Analytics has spoken with hundreds of laboratory managers around the world. What we’ve realized throughout that process is that there is a common evolution laboratories go through in their journey from newly implemented to fully operational lab. In this blog post, we share examples of the lessons learned from other laboratories so that you can avoid some of the mistakes made by your peers.
Lab Stage 1: The Start-Up Days
Your first order of business is securing lab space. You weigh your options: join an incubator, share a common space, or lease a commercial lab property? Next, you figure out how to get the lab equipment you’ll need. Should you purchase your own, or share lab equipment? Finally, you work with consumables vendors to get your laboratory stocked with the reagents and supplies you’ll need to begin conducting experiments. Unfortunately, at that point, there is little thought put into considering a lab biorepository software to track samples and specimens, for example, how you will maintain traceability of lot numbers or monitor expiration dates.
Lab Stage 2: Getting Down to Business
Once everything in the lab is in place, the team finally begins doing what they are there for – the science! Since there are only a handful of samples initially, they create a sample tracking Excel spreadsheet, or use a template sample tracker spreadsheet, to track basic sample attributes. With such a low sample volume, plus a small lab team, a sample tracking system using an Excel spreadsheet initially seems to be a good idea for many laboratories just starting out. However, just a few weeks later, it becomes apparent that it will be hard to ensure that all team members enter their samples into the Excel spreadsheet tracker, and even if they do, that the data will be formatted in a way that will allow you to run reports.
Lab Stage 3: Fault Lines Appear
The science looks good, and the sample volume starts to increase along with the size of the sample tracker spreadsheet. You are still getting by with the Excel spreadsheet tracker, but it’s getting harder and harder to ensure data integrity. Records are getting deleted by accident in the spreadsheet tracker, and since people have to manually enter the samples into the spreadsheet, there are errors in the data that constantly require cleanup. Email is being used to communicate with collaborators and customers, but there is no central location to store all that communication.
Lab Stage 4: Storm Clouds on the Horizon
It’s been a year, and your team has doubled in size. You are still trying to make the sample tracker spreadsheet work, but samples are getting lost, and people seem to have given up on using the shared spreadsheet. People have added other tools to the lab to try to get things under control, like a file-sharing system and an Access database, but that is causing even more confusion because there is no single source of truth. On top of that, a principal member left the lab, and all the communication he had with your key collaborator has been lost. You wish you had a better way!
LabStage 5: The Breaking Point
After a few months of chaos, you finally realize you need a system to manage your entire lab. Using Excel, e-mail, Access, and other tools is slowing everyone down. Data is scattered throughout disparate systems, if it is even recorded in the first place. Some people have gone rogue and are recording sample information in their own sample tracker spreadsheets and tools. Lab supplies are expiring without being used, resulting in wastage. Samples are being lost because no one is tracking and updating freezer locations. And, since you don’t know which samples can be discarded, your freezer is at capacity, so you buy another one, even though you don’t need it.
Lab Stage 6: The Promised Land
After talking to your friend who uses a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), you realize that there is a better way. You decide to implement a LIMS to centralize your sample tracking, naming, storage, supplies, and communication. In this new paradigm, everything you need is in one system. You no longer need to access six or more sample tracker spreadsheets, databases, and applications to find the status of a sample or project.
Accessioning a new sample becomes easy now that you can just scan a barcode and don’t have to manually enter any data. And, your data is safe, since no one can delete samples, and there is an audit trail on all the records. You are thrilled that your team can now focus once again on their research, and leave the LIMS to manage all the data.
Lab Stage 7: Lessons Learned
Looking back, you realize that if you had implemented a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) sooner, you would have avoided all the chaos that your team endured for a year. Your customers and collaborators would have been much happier because you wouldn’t have lost their samples. If you could have done it all again, you would have subscribed to a modular LIMS product like Lockbox LIMS, which allows you to subscribe to just the modules you need, and add additional functionality as your team needs it. Hindsight is 20/20, but you hope other people who are just beginning to go down this path will learn from your mistakes and do it right from the beginning.
Lockbox LIMS
If you are a current Lockbox LIMS subscriber and think your team could benefit from additional Lockbox modules, please reach out to your Customer Success Rep. If you are interested in purchasing the Lockbox Laboratory Information Management System for your team, please click on the “Contact Us” link on the top of this page and someone from our team will be in touch.