Informatics software goes online
Laboratory informatics is going online. Siân Harris finds out why
ABOVE: LabWare’s LIMS works with any web browser, including hand-held devices.
Over recent years the web has made its mark on many aspects of our lives – how we communicate, meet others, share interests, shop, bank and work. But one area of the lives of scientists has traditionally been separate from the web. Although experimental results and data have been collected and managed electronically for some time – in electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) and laboratory information management systems (LIMS), for example, – the web applications have not been fast and interactive enough to cope well in the laboratory environment.
Such a situation is changing, however, and the benefits of using web standards, protocols and interface technologies are now on the tip of every ELN and LIMS salesperson’s tongue.
So what has brought about this change? Firstly, of course, there is the speed of the networks and the availability of software technologies that can deliver applications to a wide and diverse community of end-users. Early corporate networks could not handle the kinds of data transfer rates that people expect when they are interacting with an ELN or a LIMS, so these grew up as desktop, local area network (LAN)-based applications. This is no longer the case. Indeed LIMS and ELNs are now often increasingly offered as enterprise-wide systems, deployed to end-users via the corporate wide area network (WAN).
More recently, the background communications between LIMS, ELN and other applications has been rapidly adopting a standard technology known as ‘web services’ – communication based on http and XML (see box, p23). This is starting to underpin the way that a LIMS communicates with other applications and perhaps even instruments, for example, and this has brought benefits of standardisation. ‘In the past there was no real one standard. Because the web is so ubiquitous this became the standard for communication,’ points out Seamus Mac Conaonaigh, director of technology for informatics for Thermo Fisher Scientific.
At the user interface
The laboratory informatics web evolution has not stopped there though. The latest stage is now happening at the user interface. The web was initially conceived as a collection of static pages rather than something with which users could interact. Although informatics companies have offered remote access via the web to some of the features of their systems for some years, full functionality via a web browser is a far more recent idea. ‘The types of things you want to do in LIMS weren’t really possible in a browser,’ explains Mac Conaonaigh. ‘With LIMS, for example, you may have data or charts that are being dynamically updated. This wasn’t easy in a browser, because the whole page would have to have been reloaded with each change.’
This sort of situation has been greatly reduced, however, by the emergence of standards such as AJAX (see box on page 23). Such developments make web pages much more interactive so they are more able to cope with systems such as LIMS and ELNs.
‘The new AJAX technology is really exciting – it makes the web a much more viable interface for highly-interactive applications like LIMS,’ observes Nick Townsend, life science director of LabWare. ‘The web has got stronger year on year. There’s no doubt that web technology is an exciting opportunity for LIMS and other laboratory applications.’
He comments that LabWare has offered a web interface for its LIMS for more than two years and the next release of LabWare LIMS, due next year, will fully utilise AJAX technology. ‘The web is an ideal environment for remote access, for example customers ordering tests or receiving results. These things have been possible before, but the web makes it easier and cheaper,’ he added. ‘We have a huge product with an enormous library of modules and AJAX will allow much more effective use of these modules via a web-browser.’
Laboratory informatics company Labtronics shares this excitement about the potential of the web. ‘Over the past five years all the exciting developments have been web-based,’ comments Tom Curtis, the company’s vice president for product innovation. Labtronics introduced the web version of its Nexxis ELN in 2006. ‘Our clients typically deploy with Internet Explorer, so that’s the standard with which we test .’ comments Curtis. ‘In the past they might have had half a dozen vastly different client-server applications. Now they are able to benefit from having one standard interface with which they are already familiar. Web deployment and the continued development of web technology also give users assurance of future proofing for their web- based applications.’
Helping deployment
Such issues are particularly important to the IT departments that are tasked with deploying and maintaining LIMS and ELN systems. In fact it is these people, more than the end users, who have been pushing for the use of web technology in these applications.
‘A global pharmaceutical company told us a few years ago that it costs them $1m just to roll out a new desktop application world-wide,’ comments Andrew Lemon, managing director of The Edge Software Consultancy. He adds that web-based applications require a much lower level of sign-off because they are much cheaper to roll out.
Web deployment is much cheaper for LIMS and ELN customers because the applications only need to be deployed once on a central server and then they can be used by anybody on the customer’s network. Similarly, the applications can be supported and upgraded centrally. In contrast, client-based applications require IT personnel to install and maintain the software on every individual PC, unless a thin-client deployment technology such as CITRIX is used.
Thermo Fisher Scientific’s web strategy reflects these IT department requirements. Although its LIMS products already offer core functionality via standard web technologies such as AJAX and HTML, its customers often feel the web-browsing experience is not good enough for applications they use all day, every day. One result of a new partnership between Thermo Fisher and Microsoft, which will be reflected in Thermo Fisher’s next release of its LIMS systems, will be to remove the deployment hassles of the full desktop application by including Microsoft’s ClickOnce technology. This essentially enables IT managers to load the latest LIMS release just once. All the users are then sent a web link that directs them to a page that starts up the LIMS on their desktop. ‘The ClickOnce application is almost like a cookie in that it is separate from other applications on your computer,’ explains Thermo Fisher’s Mac Conaonaigh. ‘[The application] is delivered via the web, but still gets the power of the desktop.’
The partnership doesn’t stop there, however. The next stage is to use Windows Presentation Foundation technologies to deliver the company’s full LIMS experience on the web using a range of browsers. This will be integrated with Thermo Fisher’s LIMS in the next 12-24 months.
Legacy support
Mac Conaonaigh believes that, as well as working with the software giant to develop a web approach, it is important to continue to support its existing LIMS systems. ‘Our applications haven’t really changed, only the ways they can be delivered, so the customer’s current systems, and more importantly their data, are completely safe. We are providing our customers with options and alternatives that meet their individual needs. In addition to offering web deployment capabilities, we’ll also offer the application on CD as long as customers want it.’
LabWare’s Nick Townsend agrees about the importance of supporting the customer base as web technology moves forward. ‘We see LIMS as a long-term investment for customers. The LIMS is typically going to have a life-span of 10 to 15 years and, over that time, customers accumulate considerable amounts of data and expertise in the LIMS. What makes a difference to the user is how vendors bring their products forward through each wave of new technology,’ he explained. This is an important consideration because moving complex laboratory applications to the web can require a redesign of the underlying database or limit functionality. ‘If LIMS vendors start from scratch with their web versions this could orphan their existing customers with no upgrade.’ In addition, users in large companies are likely to move to the web in phases rather than all at once so customers need to be able to use both Windows desktop applications and web systems in parallel.
He also believes that being able to support any browser with no device-specific downloads or plug-ins is very important. While most web applications are tested on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer because this tends to be what customers use currently, Townsend says that LabWare’s LIMS works with any web browser, including the one in the new iPhones and even the browser that is built into Nintendo’s Wii. He sees developments, such as being able to access the LIMS via an iPhone and other hand-held devices, as important if scientists are collecting samples in the field or if a manager in a meeting wanted access to the latest up-to-date information from the lab.
The way to achieve this, Townsend believes, is to use open standards such as AJAX, XML, SOAP and Web Services and not to get locked into proprietary technologies that are often associated with companies such as Microsoft or Oracle.
Open standards are also important to The Edge Software Consultancy. This company, which started about two years ago, launched its BioRails product as a 100 per cent web-based system from the outset and made the code open source. ‘As a company we believe in transparency,’ said the company’s managing director Andrew Lemon. ‘We have removed the huge licence fee barrier to introducing this kind of software. Instead, they pay us for value-added services, including preparing the software for them, support and best practice consultancy.’ BioRails, which is aimed at biological research in the pharmaceutical industry, provides a combination of ELN, LIMS and project management functionality. It is written in the open-source Ruby on Rails, which underpins many social networking sites. ‘We’ve been able to make BioRails a very interactive application using AJAX technology’ he explains. ‘The difference between what you can do on the desktop and what you can do on the web is increasingly blurred.’
ABOVE: the Edge Software Consultancy’s bioRails product is 100-per-cent web-based.
Despite the company’s strong web emphasis, however, Lemon still sees a role for desktop applications. ‘We also have client-based applications to sit on top of BioRails and communicate via Web services,’ he says. ‘The main reason for using a thick client for these applications is to facilitate offline working and enable interaction with Excel, which is the application of choice for the majority of biologists. The Edge hopes to surpass the utility of Excel for biological research with its own multidimensional spreadsheet application called MorphIt.’
Security is not a problem
Although different companies have different approaches on how to offer laboratory informatics over the web, they tend to agree on the topic of security. ‘A web application can be set up to be as secure as online banking, using appropriate security protocols,’ says The Edge Software Consultancy’s Lemon. In addition, most companies would install their LIMS or ELN on their intranet, rather than on the internet. ‘We can set extra security if they are doing external collaborations,’ added Lemon.
‘You increase security by centralising your components. Security with web-based applications can be as effective as the traditional client-server model,’ agrees Labtronics’ Tom Curtis.
Another issue that the companies agree on is that the underlying technology is not really the most important aspect of a laboratory system. ‘We have to get past the question of “do you do the web?” and work out what customers actually need,’ points out Thermo Fisher’s Seamus Mac Conaonaigh. ‘We don’t believe that web-only is the right answer now.’
LabWare’s Townsend agrees: ‘Seeking the latest technology is not the be-all and end-all. There are many factors to take into account, such as price, functionality, implementation and support services. You want it to meet the needs of your end users and deliver results for your business.’
The standards that pave the way to web-based laboratory informatics:
AJAX is a technique for creating interactive web applications. It aims to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change.
XML is a general-purpose markup language for sharing structured data across different information systems, particularly via the internet.
SOAP is a protocol for exchanging XML-based messages over computer networks. This is normally using http/https.
Web services are software systems that support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. Their definition encompasses many different systems, but commonly refers to clients and servers that communicate using XML messages that follow the SOAP standard.
