A laboratory information management system, also sometimes called a lab information management system or clinical laboratory information management system, is an application-based service with various features that support the daily operations of a modern laboratory. Such systems have evolved to serve rapidly changing needs of the scientific and pharmaceutical communities. They can control, track, receive, manage, and compile data in a cost effective manner. These systems are designed to integrate seamlessly with enterprise resource planning software and other applications. They also have the ability to interface with other systems such as ERP, manufacturing control, and clinical management systems.
The main functions of these systems are to optimize the performance of clinical and pre-clinical laboratories, environmental control parameters, provide and manage data acquisition, provide workflow automation, provide accurate, organized, and integrated data capture, control distribution, and provide reports for work requirements analysis. They include a power management system to ensure correct voltage and current conditions throughout the production environment. They also include a production control system to assure that production is scheduled and carried out as scheduled. This includes an RFID Labeling and E Gestion Control to control inventory and labeling.
Some features of these systems are data capture, data transfer, workflow automation, and power management. A feature that is becoming increasingly used is data capture. It helps the users to take full advantage of the laboratory environment by enabling them to capture and transmit all the necessary data from one workstation to another in real time. Workflow automation enables the system provisioning, transport, and storage requirements of lab environments.
It Lab Management
Some of the requirements of modern day lab environments include telecommunications, network connectivity, desktop sharing, remote access, and desktop management platform. Network connectivity is needed between the systems and the servers for administering the laboratory environments. There must be sufficient desktop bus adapters (DBA) available to connect the system to the local area network (LAN). This allows for seamless communications between the various systems and workstations. The ability to allow access to the Internet is also very important.
Virtual lab environments need to be carefully planned to match the exact needs of the laboratory. The most common virtual lab management platform is virtual lab Exchange. It is highly configurable with all of the necessary lab resources including SCMs, Storage Areas, Work Queues, Workstations, and Servers. It provides the ability to configure SCM in-place to simplify deployment and manage the lab management. It also provides a server-side environment that allows for remote access from other workstations through the internet or local area networks (LANs).
Many companies are trying to move away from traditional VDI lab infrastructure and towards virtual lab solutions, mainly because they are easier to administer, more cost efficient, provide greater capacity, and better manageability. Virtualization provides a high level of isolation and reduces the risk of downtime for the lab. It also allows for more security and integrity to the data. However, in this case, the IT manager must ensure that the appropriate VMs are chosen for each workload.
