LIMS aids industrial production
On the surface one lab may look like any other, but dig deeper and the requirements placed on LIMS vary vastly among different industries, as David Robson discovers
ABOVE: Eskom, a South African electricity provider, has recently deployed the SampleManager LIMS from Thermo Fisher Scientific.
It was possibly the first attempt anyone had made to trace the spread and cause of a disease. In 1854, John Snow traced 89 deaths from cholera in Soho, London, to just one water pump on Broad Street. Prior to this, popular theory had held that the disease was transmitted by noxious air, but Snow finally demonstrated that polluted water, contaminated by a cess pit just three feet away from the pump was the cause of the deaths.
For his time, Snow’s methods were meticulously scientific. He recorded the place and time of each death, and interviewed the victims’ families to determine their regular water supply. He then took samples from every water source in the area to study under a microscope and presented all the information on a street map of the area. The results showed that, of the 89 deaths, ‘there were 61 instances in which I was informed that the deceased persons used to drink the pump water from Broad Street, either constantly or occasionally.’1
If Snow had been living in the 21st century, he would almost certainly have been using a LIMS software package to keep track of the different samples and where they came from, to store the results of his interviews and experiments and to generate information about the trends that they showed. Many LIMS could even represent the information on a map, just as Snow had done 150 years ago.
The deployment of LIMS in drug discovery is well publicised, but their use outside the life sciences has often been ignored. As Snow’s story shows, the principle of keeping a systematic record of every experiment and analysis was laid down with the very foundations of modern science, and as such the benefits of LIMS reach much further than the pharmaceutical industry.
Process feedback in water treatment and electricity production
The meticulous water treatment programme currently deployed in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA, would have made Snow proud. Water, collected from 40 wells and distributed to 240,000 citizens, is treated at the Ashland Water Treatment Facility to remove unwanted minerals, herbicides, pesticides and disease-spreading microbes.
The company, Lincoln Water System, has recently deployed the Sample Master Pro LIMS from Accelerated Technology Laboratories to keep track of the tests performed at the individual wells, at the treatment plant, and in the 1,200-mile network of pipes that distributes the water to its customers.
In contrast to Lincoln Water System’s previous LIMS, which required all data to be entered by hand, Sample Master Pro interfaces directly with the scientific instruments. The software also simplified the process of logging in samples, by creating the same barcode for all the samples in a batch and by automating the label printing as soon as a sample is signed off.
Just as Snow recorded the geographical origin of his data, utilities companies such as Lincoln Water System also need to keep track of where samples originally came from, to trace the connection between potential contamination in different wells and sources. The LIMS records the coordinates of a sample’s origin from geographical positioning systems to provide an automated and accurate method of collecting this data.
Christine Paszko, vice president of sales and marketing at Accelerated Technology Laboratories, says that one of the key differences between the way LIMS are applied in the pharmaceutical industry and the utilities is the kind of time scales that are involved. ‘Utilities have the luxury of knowing when samples are needed,’ she says. ‘They can pre-generate sample collection sheets and labels so the scientists know exactly what they need to do. In the pharmaceutical industry you don’t really have sample scheduling in the same way.’
To cater for this, the Sample Master Pro LIMS includes the optional Sample Scheduling module that can configure the timetable for the coming year and generate collection sheets that already contain this information. It also sends email alerts to remind the scientists when the samples need to be collected.
In some cases, utility companies need continuous feedback on the production process, to provide instantaneous control of the plant environment. The implementation of Thermo Fisher Scientific’s SampleManager LIMS to the South African electricity company Eskom provides a prime example of this.
The company is currently in the process of deploying the LIMS in its 34 laboratories, where the software will help to improve the efficiency of electricity production. To do this, the LIMS collects data about the composition of the coal and the waste gases that are emitted once the coal has been burnt.
Often these tests are performed automatically on the conveyor belt as the coal is fed into the furnace, to provide continuous measurement. This information is combined with offline results from laboratories to alter conditions in the boiler, such as the oxygen content and the volume of fuel that is supplied.
The petrochemical industry
A contaminated supply of petrol or diesel is just as dangerous as badly made drugs, with the possibility of unexpected malfunctions in vehicles that could lead to fatal accidents. It’s no wonder, then, that almost every petrochemical plant will have implemented a LIMS system to ensure that the correct tests are performed on its products at the correct time.
Total Petrochemicals chose the LabWare LIMS from LabWare to act as a repository for data in both its research and development and quality control laboratories. In the QC labs it is used to track samples and manage the workflow of different analyses, and in R&D labs researchers use it to request tests and analyses of new products. Once a product has been produced the LIMS creates a certificate for the customer that verifies the quality of the product.
The LIMS will be integrated with CambridgeSoft’s E-Notebook to provide an easy interface for the researchers to work with. This allows the scientists to access all the functionality of the LIMS system directly from their electronic laboratory notebook. ‘They don’t need to open the LIMS interface,’ says Joëlle Defour, the R&D and scientific systems manager at Total. ‘They simply send the information from the ELN, which directs the LIMS to create a sample, which then returns the sample number directly to the ELN.’
Defour says that it is LabWare’s web technology that allows users to easily configure the software so that it can send commands to other programs, even from different vendors.
Petrochemical companies like Total frequently need to observe any trends in the data that they are monitoring – a requirement in common with the utility companies. ‘The reporting tool requirements are a major difference between pharma and non-pharma applications,’ says Peter Boogaard, director of LIMS product management at Applied Biosystems, which provides such LIMS. ‘They [petrochemical companies] need statistical quality control analysis to help make predictions and to see how the products are evolving.’
Typically, this information needs to be presented in a way that anyone – and not just an analytical chemist – can understand. The SQL*LIMS from Applied Biosystems can create a very simple ‘dashboard’ that represents all of the necessary information in a graphical form, such as a pie chart that is updated every 10 minutes. ‘It’s important for everyone who needs a quick overview of the process,’ says Boogaard.
ABOVE: The SQL*LIMS from Applied Biosystems provides an analysis of trends in the data.
This information can be used to track whether a batch is slowly drifting away from its pre-defined specifications. It can also indicate a remedy, such as blending two different products together – a process that would be out of the question in the heavily regulated pharmaceutical industry.
‘A big difference between the two industries is that petrochemical companies can tone down the audit trail functions in the LIMS system, without electronic signatures at each step of the process,’ says Boogaard. That’s not to say that petrochemical companies don’t still need traceability – the past few examples demonstrate how this is essential to ensure that a good quality product is produced – but in the pharmaceutical industry every tiny change to a piece of equipment or software has to be recorded, whereas other industries have a bit more freedom.
Mike Arlitt, the director of sales and marketing at Baytek International, agrees: ‘The primary difference is that the pharmaceutical industry is more finely regulated. If you take a LIMS with these functions built in, it can become very cumbersome and costly to modify.’
Each LIMS supplier seems to have developed a different technique to allow users to overcome these differences and develop a solution that suits their own application. Many ‘generic’ LIMS, such as the LabWare LIMS that Total uses, contain a flexible interface allowing the user to reconfigure the software.
Baytek International, on the other hand, produces LIMS with functions specifically designed for petrochemical laboratories. ‘If you try to whittle down [generic LIMS] to suit petrochemical laboratories it can be time consuming and the cost of ownership is much greater,’ says Arlitt. Accelerated Technology Laboratories seems to have gone for a medium somewhere between the two extremes. It provides software in a modular format, so companies can pick and cho ose the functions that would suit their application.
Whatever the particular system, the fact remains that LIMS play an important role in a range of quality control and R&D applications far beyond the scope of one article. As Kevin Smith, director of channels for Thermo Fisher Scientific says: ‘A lab is a lab. Samples go in, they are tested, and results come out.’ Whether it is in drug discovery, petrochemical production, food manufacturing or environmental management, labs will always need a reliable repository to store and track their activities.
1 John Snow’s letter to the editor of the Medical Times and Gazette.
