LIMS: What It Means And How They Are Used

By Andrew Thompson


There is not a laboratory in existence, at least in the modern world, that doesn't make use of a laboratory information system. No matter what they are called, they are essential tools for laboratories and the scientists who work in them to get all of their work done. Some people call them LIS for laboratory information system, or LMS for laboratory management system, but these are simply different titles for the same thing and are interchangeable with LIMS.

The reason why everyone in the scientific community has to know about these types of things is that it would be impossible to find a single working lab today that doesn't have one. The reason for this is that scientific research laboratories nowadays have to go through so much information that there is no possibility that all of the data would be able to be tracked properly without one. It's not just about making the life of the scientists easier; it's about reaching new heights of scientific understanding, to help mankind in all kinds of different ways.

Tracking workflow is a major task in most laboratories simply because of how many people are often working in them and how much specific information is required. It is good to know exactly what happened, who did it, when, and any other information that can be given. This is often what makes the difference between an experiment failing and it going well.

What often happened before these types of advanced tools were possible is that some information was inevitably lost in the sea of chicken-scratch handwriting and mountains of files. No matter how diligent an organizer you are, there comes a point where manual data input has too much room for inaccuracy. Having something like this that puts all of the information automatically into the same place that is safe and secure has made accuracy in laboratories much higher.

Specialty labs are ones that focus on a specific type of science or experiments. In these cases, a tool that is customized to their purposes is often needed. This makes it so the somewhat different needs of these labs can be met more easily.

There have been many different types of information systems over the years. The one thing that is most noticeable about how they've changed is how advanced they have become. Scientific and technological advancement is the reason why these tools have developed so much.

These systems were first used to track samples. Scientists relied on them heavily in the early days of experimentation. Now the uses of information systems have grown immensely.

In the same way that science itself differs in many ways between the various branches it has, laboratories and scientists themselves also come in many different varieties. This is bound to create many opportunities for differences in opinions, and the opinion for what makes an LIS what it is is one of those divergences. It is good to get to know what constitutes an information system in the lab you're working in before accidentally misunderstanding what is being said.




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