Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS)

Abstract

Modern spectroscopic laboratories generate enormous quantities of data of varying quality. Historically these data were acquired and analyzed by skilled spectroscopists and laboratory information management systems (LIMS) were limited to the storage and retrieval of these data and results by only a few skilled spectroscopists. Times have changed. LIMS have now been expanded to support high-throughput generic and reproducible experiments for instrumentation with low downtime and produce data outputs that will either provide canned paper reports or flow as data streams to the desktops of the chemists for processing and reporting. Today's laboratory workers are expected to be proficient in the utilization of highly automated spectrometer systems and their associated offline data processing suites and electronic notebooks for both data and knowledge management software. While the management of complex spectroscopic data resulting from a heterogeneous environment of instrument types and vendors has been hampered by a lack of standards and cooperation between instrument vendors and software developers, many companies at this point have successfully deployed analytical data management systems by adopting Web-based technologies and intermediate standards for the handling of complex data types.