LIMS Versus LIS Article · Out on a LIMS

LiMS Journal (@LIMSjournal)

This topic was covered by a few lengthy discussions on Linkedin: http://bit.ly/1AgOfVC and http://bit.ly/1wwdMxz back in 2012.

The workflow for traditional clinical diagnostics labs such as Hospital, Reference and POL are extremely automated and standardized. You will find LIS applications hard coded around those processes and nearly completely inflexible to do anything else but what they do, they do well. It has not been a stretch for a LIMS to do what LIS do but the difficulty is in user acceptance. This has forced LIMS to build in very precise screens and workflows that match precisely what clinical diagnostics labs do. It is not difficult but if the LIMS does not do it out of the box, the system will never make it past the gate.

There are specialty areas such as Pain Management and Molecular Diagnostics. Traditional clinical diagnostics LIS applications do not work well in those environments but these labs regularly purchase LIS apps because the lab staff came from the clinical diagnostics background. They quickly get a good education on what these new types of labs do and become overwhelmed quickly and the LIS implementation fails and they are off looking for a replacement and they look at LIMS. These types of labs are where you will find LIMS but it is very rare to find a LIMS in a POL, Hospital or Reference lab.

In my company we spun out a product line that is purpose built to clinical diagnostics because that is the best way to address that market. Trying to shoehorn a LIMS into a traditional clinical lab is a big mistake. I know because I lived and breathed that mistake over 5 years ago and lived long enough to fix it and do it right. We treat the LIS market very different from the LIMS market even though the apps have so many similarities.

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1 comment from 1 person on March 11, 2015.

March 11, 2015
LiMS Journal (@LIMSjournal)
This topic was covered by a few lengthy discussions on Linkedin: http://bit.ly/1AgOfVC and http://bit.ly/1wwdMxz back in 2012.

The workflow for traditional clinical diagnostics labs such as Hospital, Reference and POL are extremely automated and standardized. You will find LIS applications hard coded around those processes and nearly completely inflexible to do anything else but what they do, they do well. It has not been a stretch for a LIMS to do what LIS do but the difficulty is in user acceptance. This has forced LIMS to build in very precise screens and workflows that match precisely what clinical diagnostics labs do. It is not difficult but if the LIMS does not do it out of the box, the system will never make it past the gate.

There are specialty areas such as Pain Management and Molecular Diagnostics. Traditional clinical diagnostics LIS applications do not work well in those environments but these labs regularly purchase LIS apps because the lab staff came from the clinical diagnostics background. They quickly get a good education on what these new types of labs do and become overwhelmed quickly and the LIS implementation fails and they are off looking for a replacement and they look at LIMS. These types of labs are where you will find LIMS but it is very rare to find a LIMS in a POL, Hospital or Reference lab.

In my company we spun out a product line that is purpose built to clinical diagnostics because that is the best way to address that market. Trying to shoehorn a LIMS into a traditional clinical lab is a big mistake. I know because I lived and breathed that mistake over 5 years ago and lived long enough to fix it and do it right. We treat the LIS market very different from the LIMS market even though the apps have so many similarities.

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Working on the same problem in your lab?