Comparing LIMS: Capabilities and Limitations
Bika
License: Open source, but charge for implementation/customization/support
Targeted: Large “industry-grade” labs, especially in the wine industry
Functionality:
- Manage and publish online lab procedures, news, training material
- Multiple labs working on very similar things can submit their data to a central system and compare their data to that of others
- Statistical analyses
Advantages:
- Good for a system with many lab technicians working on a predetermined set of protocols
HalX
License: “free source”
Targeted: Smaller-scale structural biology labs
Functionality:
- Storing basic information about a wide range of solutions, buffers, organisms, proteins, genes—things used or studied in the laboratory—as well as protocols
- Able to combine protocols into workflows
Advantages:
- Screenshots look highly user-friendly
- Would be very useful in centralizing this information so don’t have to flip through old lab books
- Lab members could still write information in lab notebooks for archival purposes but this could help for sharing information with other researchers
Disadvantages:
- Lists of possible steps in protocols and workflows are extremely inadequate for many labs—scope of application is too narrow
STARLIMS
License: Commercially sold
Targeted: Very large-scale industrial labs, not academic research labs
Functionality:
- Not much information available
- Probably can do everything in HalX, but much more too
- Particularly concerned with ensuring compliance with business regulations
CryoTrack
License: Commercially sold
Targeted: Academic or industrial biological/chemical labs
Functionality: Inventory management system
Disadvantages: Many OGI labs are probably not large enough to have enough chemicals/samples and technicians to make it worth it just for inventory
QSI WinLIMS
License: Commercially sold
Targeted: Industrial/government testing and quality control
Functionality:
- Not much information available
- Similar to STARLIMS
LIMS in general
“A Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) is computer software that is used in the laboratory for the management of samples, laboratory users, instruments, standards and other laboratory functions such as invoicing, plate management, and work flow automation… LIMS are generally targeted toward environmental, research or commercial analysis, such as pharmaceutical or petrochemical.” (Wikipedia)
Issues to consider:
In an academic institution like OGI, there are many more graduate students and post-docs than technicians, each of whom have a personal stake and some degree of autonomy in their research—each tends to be working on a mostly self-contained project…most LIMS seem to be oriented towards an environment in which there are many lab techs without autonomy all working on similar experiments or tests.
Douglas Perry, “LIMS in the academic world”:
Discusses the issues creating the gulf between LIMS and academia, but his impractical answer is to make academia more like industry, rather than to create LIMS that are more appropriate for academic labs