Pharmaceutical and biotechnological research claims high throughput of experimental assays running on automated laboratory systems. Complex and flexible laboratory automation requires adaptive laboratory information management systems (LIMS) and a suitable LIMS systems integration. Therefore, the direct, automated, and bi-directional communication between LIMS and laboratory components (sensors, analytical instruments, robot process control systems, cell handling systems, etc.) is key to secure and efficient control of the thereby generated data. The heterogeneous laboratory environment requires a flexible open framework that permits an appropriate syntax and semantic conversion for exchanging the data. After a detailed analysis of different laboratory processes in life science automation, loose system coupling based on a service-oriented approach is suggested for vertical and horizontal systems integration in LIMS. Thus, the involved systems benefit from data consistency and usability. Independence and robustness of the systems is ensured. Extended functionalities (such as integrated process tracking with embedded data visualizations in LIMS) as well as the fulfillment of comprehensive collaborative tasks become possible.This article presents a general concept for this kind of framework by describing an example of a process mapping in the field of drug discovery within LIMS.

In medical studies, an increasingly decentralized automated information acquisition occurs. Innovations assume for example a multi-parameter mobile sensor system combined with compact mobile computers (such as PDAs) communicating via Bluetooth or other wireless interfaces. Data sets from manual investigations and automated examination procedures arise in distributed systems. This results in above-average requirements of configuration for medical R&D applications. On the other hand in medical research projects involving test persons, there is a need for accumulating data from various examinations, for selecting data sets according to any criteria and for using the data on different targets. Fulfilling these demands, an open web-based integration platform was developed. It is based on a workflow-oriented information management for laboratory and examination characteristic processes, picking up experiences of flexible, hierarchical laboratory automation. A process mapping and communication framework is proposed for workflow documentation as well as systems coupling with mobile medical data acquisition. It can be freely configured for application in medi-cal examination by including process automation. Challenges of a universal, decentralized acquisition of arbitrary even timebased process parameters are archived by using serviceoriented communication protocols. An exemplary project presentation illustrates potential and advantages of the developed integration platform.

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