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Building a single IT network, however, is
no easy task, according to Mallya. “Because
of the changes under way in life sciences,
the IT industry serving the sector isn’t fully
developed yet,” she says.
“Much of what is being done
in the laboratory is routine,
however, and software vendors
are popping up left and
right. Some consolidation is
taking place, some vendors
are trying to make it on their
own, and some are partnering
with other vendors.
Others are developing userspecific
systems and then
commercializing them.”
Laboratory research IT
can be viewed as a threetiered
pyramid with an
information gathering and
process management layer
at the bottom, an executive
decision-making tier at the
top, and a more nebulous
“middle management”
layer in between. It is at that
middle level that information
tends to be stored and
analyzed and accessed from
both the top and the bottom.
But it is at the bottom
level—the LIMS level—that
actual research takes place.
Researchers’ needs and
software vendors’ offerings
vary widely at the bottom
Hu
Mfuko
of the pyramid. Thermo Fisher, one of the
largest suppliers, has several LIMS systems
for both the chemical and life sciences
markets. They include Sample Manager,
a generic LIMS; and Watson, Darwin, and
Nautilus, products tailored to more specific
aspects of life sciences research.
According to Seamus Mac Conaonaigh,
Thermo Fisher’s director of technology for
informatics, the trend in software development
has been toward systems that allow
users in specific research sectors to easily
access, format, and route data. “The reason
this is important is that the hardware and
instrumentation in labs is generating absolutely
colossal amounts of data,” he says.
“It is not enough just to get it. You need a
way to make sense of it.”
The standard practice of relying on Internet
services to route data from the LIMS
is inadequate, Mac Conaonaigh maintains.
“That still places the onus on the customer to
figure out how that integration is supposed
to happen,” he says. “We are certainly providing
them with the tools to get at the data, but
what to do with it and the actual business of
writing the software to get the data out and
put it into another system is
still something they have to
do if vendors only provide
them with Web services.”
To that end, Mac Conaonaigh
says Thermo Fisher
consults with customers
on ways of aggregating data
WINDBER RESEARCH INSTITUTE
MULTIPLE MYELOMA RESEARCH CONSORTIUM
through commercial portals
like Microsoft’s SharePoint,
which are becoming ubiquitous
in the life sciences
and which many specialized
software providers are
promoting as a means of
system integration (C&EN,
May 26, page 13). Thermo
Fisher will also introduce
a version of its LIMS software
that is compatible
with Microsoft’s BizTalk
server, a technology for
connecting disparate business
IT networks.
According to Mac Conaonaigh,
the big challenge
in software system design
is gauging scale and scope.
Laboratories and clinics
traditionally have not shared
data, he adds. And just getting
big drug companies and
research institutes to think
about new approaches to configuring IT can
be daunting, particularly if the Food & Drug
Administration regulates them. “This is a
very conservative industry,” Mac Conaonaigh
says.
LIKE IT OR NOT, however, the life sciences
sector is going through big changes, especially
in the laboratory. Ron S. Kasner, vice president
for corporate development with Labvantage,
another major LIMS supplier, says
managers at drug companies and research
institutes recognize a need to implement
operational intelligence networks similar to
the business intelligence networks launched
in manufacturing and financial industries in
the 1990s. The key, Kasner says, is an integration
of data gathering and analysis.
Labvantage has expanded its Sapphire
LIMS in recent years to accommodate new
trends in research. “We’ve added biorepository
management,” Kasner says. “We have
advanced storage and logistics for tracking
WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG 14 NOVEMBER 24, 2008