How to Save Money When Implementing LIMS in the Laboratory?

Learn how to maximize cost savings when implementing a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) in your quality control laboratory. A Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) is a significant investment and, as with most infrastructure costs, it can be hard to justify the expense when your current lab data processes are already working.

In many cases, the choice comes down not to what is working in your laboratory, but to what could be working better.

As companies grow and the volume of laboratory work becomes increasingly complex, Excel spreadsheets and paper notebooks simply stop being practical.

Once the decision to invest in a LIMS has been made, customers usually want to know what they can do to make the cost more affordable.

That’s why, in this article, you’ll learn how to save money on the LIMS implementation process in your laboratory.

Clean Up the Data

The first and most important thing you can do to save costs on a LIMS implementation is to clean up your laboratory data before importing it into the new LIMS.

Work with your laboratories to create strategies for simplifying all your data. For example, having 12 different assays in your LIMS for a single type of laboratory test can make your statistical data unnecessarily complicated. 

When your static data is in good shape and all non-digitized data is ready to be imported, you will save time and money in the pre-implementation phase, requiring less configuration and customization later on when the system is actually implemented.

Standardize Processes

The next way to save costs before a LIMS implementation is to standardize your laboratory’s processes and workflows. Coordinate the processes across all your laboratories so they run as efficiently as possible.

For example, sample handling may occur differently in a microbiology lab versus a chemistry lab, but they can share the same underlying processes.

Make sure your standardized processes and workflows are well documented, so that the process flows within the LIMS can be easily understood by new users.

Confirm that these documented processes reflect what actually happens in the laboratory. More efficient processes outside the LIMS translate into more efficient processes inside the LIMS.

Standardizing and improving your laboratory processes before implementing a LIMS can greatly improve how the LIMS will function and can reduce the time spent by the vendor or a third-party consultant cleaning them up during implementation.

Finally, review and improve your current standard operating procedures (SOPs). Optimizing SOPs before a LIMS implementation ensures that no time is wasted configuring the LIMS around inefficient procedures.

Automate as Much as Possible

Once the LIMS implementation is underway, invest in automating as much as possible. This may seem counterintuitive because it represents an upfront cost, but instrument integration and automating certain processes will pay dividends down the road.

Assign specific subject matter experts who know the instruments and who will have dedicated time during implementation to carry out automation tasks. These SMEs should include people who actually perform laboratory work, because there is often a disconnect between management processes and bench-level operations.

Automating as much as possible is a smart investment, but focus first on the areas that will yield the greatest return on that investment – generally, interfacing the instruments that are used most often is a smart starting point.

Also look for areas that cause the most stress in the laboratory and that lead to errors, corrective actions, etc. This doesn’t have to be strict automation; it can be as simple as barcode labels, pre-configured workflows guiding a complicated process, or folders or queries to find samples that fell through the cracks in processing (among many other potential efficiency opportunities).

Approve Results by Exception

Another way to save costs is to configure your LIMS to implement approval of results by exception. To do this, your LIMS can be configured with the allowed specifications for individual products or processes.

When a batch falls out of specification, the LIMS can trigger a notification. By doing this, instead of your lab analysts manually entering results as pass or fail against specifications, the system will automatically approve results that are within specification and flag only those that are not.

Document Internally

After implementation, if your LIMS needs to be validated, you can reduce the cost of this work if you’re able to prepare part of the validation documentation internally.

Some of the post-implementation cost savings can be achieved when you minimize customization so that the vendor’s IQ and OQ test scripts are sufficient.

PQ testing depends on the intended use of your specific system and must be carried out carefully by someone familiar with your LIMS, regardless of how much customization was done. 

Configure your LIMS to automatically generate reports at scheduled intervals and notify stakeholders, so the laboratory team doesn’t need to waste time doing this manually.

Conclusion

Once your LIMS is implemented and your laboratory data now lives in a central repository, it will be much easier to perform data visualization.

This gives you the ability to analyze your data in new ways and uncover trends or patterns that can improve your resource planning and reduce costs.

This way, you ensure that your LIMS is running at its best for you, knowing you’re getting the return on the investment made in the system.

Actiz is an affordable, full-featured solution for your laboratory, the only one on the market focused on reducing time, cost, and effort indicators. Get in touch and optimize your laboratory.