How LIMS Have Helped Scientists Over The Years

By Andrew Thompson


Virtually every lab that has ever existed has incorporated the use of what's called a laboratory information management system. The common abbreviation for this kind of thing is LIMS, which is helpful to know for anyone going into a laboratory setting for the first time and encountering this acronym. There are also other common names for the same type of system, such as LIS for laboratory information system, as well as LMS for laboratory management system.

It would be impossible to find a single modern lab in the world today that doesn't use a system like this. There is just no way around them when one considers the massive amounts of data and other information that these scientific research facilities have to go through on a daily basis. They are absolutely essential to make the tasks and duties of the scientists no only easier, but in a way that opens up the doors to greater possibilities.

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.

When information is put in manually, there is so much more room for error than when it is put in automatically. Although some people are very meticulous and extremely careful, there is just so much that can go wrong when records are kept this way. All it takes is for a number or decimal point to be put in the wrong place, or for a file to be misplaced, for disaster to occur, and that's why an automated method is best.

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.

Information systems have changed a lot over the years. Mainly, they have become much more advanced. This is both due to the help of science and due to the advancing needs of scientists.

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.

There can be no doubting that people come in many different varieties, and the same goes for scientists, scientific research facilities, and even the different branches of science itself. As such, many different scientists don't exactly agree on what makes a laboratory information system. There are a number of slightly different definitions, so if a person is about to start working in a new lab, a helpful thing to do is learn exactly what the scientists in this lab mean when they say LIS, LMS, LIMS, or whatever other acronyms they're using to mean the information system of the laboratory.




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