template LIMS thoughts

It is apparant that various forms of Laboratory Informaion Management System are needed by different people in UCD campus. It has to be Web based. So I am thinking to estiblish some template systems for different purposes.

Wikipedia defined LIMS as:

A Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) is computer software that is used in the laboratory for the management of samples, laboratory users, instruments, standards and other laboratory functions such as invoicing, plate management, and work flow automation. A LIMS and a Laboratory Information System (LIS) perform similar functions. The primary difference is that LIMS are generally targeted toward environmental, research or commercial analysis, such as pharmaceutical or petrochemical, and LIS are targeted toward the clinical market (hospitals and other clinical labs).

I found one nice blog about several Web based systems at

http://labsoftnews.typepad.com/lab_soft_news/2006/03/the_first_brows.html

There is also a website has a lot of discussions (http://www.limsfinder.com/)

Most existing system especially commercial ones are for pharmacedutical or biotech to track chemicals and data high throughput instruments. They are not only expensive, but also not what most genomics based biologists.

There are some open source solutions too, like:

Bika: A South Africa company. A system developed on Plone and Python
Website: www.bikalabs.com/

Halx: A system developed for Structural Genomics activities. I like the way they develop their design that seperate presentation and data model.
Website: http://halx.genomics.eu.org/

BASE: It is for Microarray.
Website: http://base.thep.lu.se/

My idea is to see if we can develop different modules that can simplify the process of building customized system. For example:

User admination: User authentication and authorization modules
Data and File management: Data upload and download
Billing
Communications
Report
Visulization
Backend bulk upload