Laboratory Information Management Systems - An Approach as an Integration Platform within Flexible Laboratory Automation for Application in Life Sciences

Abstract

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.

Data Acqusition, storage and online retrieval of Chromatography from Automated HPLC for pharmaceutical research applications

“…It has been developed to integrate laboratory equipment with software controls as to achieve an automated and seamless workflow process [7]. Most of commercially available LIMS suffer from limitations [5,6,14]. The specifications of the system are designed based on the manufacturer requirement and depending on their system, the measurement acquired are typically saved in proprietary file formats.…”

“…Most common problem known by LIMS is that users are unable to use the saved format to do offline processing or customized analysis and also users unable to share the saved file in a common format with other users. Works have been done [5][6][7][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] to overcome the TNF syndrome by producing more common file formats and most of the works prefer XML to be the solution [6,7,10,14,[16][17][18]27] however, some solutions often do not guarantee compatibility with other solutions [34,40,41,44]. The approach of using XML may vary in terms of storing and retrieving data, types of data stored, interfacing the instrument, networking, virtual instrument technique and software used [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][24][25][26][27].…”

“…This work is based on modern automated application process which is an efficient application of data acquisition [11]. Many others custom made LIMS have been developed for this purpose [5][6][7][8][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”

“…In order to justify the measured data taken from AMCOS and the data stored using CONSYS, a comparison have been made with the proprietary software for the reliability and trustworthy of the system. In this paper, literature review had been made in order to compare the existing LIMS [5][6][7][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18], and the experiment that had been done to test the AMCOS and CONSYS. Fig.…”

Mobile Robot for Life Science Automation

“…The developed advanced systems used in life science automation can be classified into three main kinds, referring to their purposes: complex robot-based systems [2][3]; automated analytical and measurement systems [4][5], and laboratory information management systems [6]. Among these systems, the most widely known are laboratory robots.…”