Internet of things in the laboratory?

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

“Internet of things” is the word of the future, but for many of our customers, their laboratory resembles this future already.

Let me explain: More and more of our LIMS customers, have chosen to integrate their laboratory instruments to communicate with their LIMS. This one-way or two-way integration of course minimizes manual data entry work and possible human error, but also kind of simulates an “internet of things” where the laboratory instrument may not be intelligent on its own, but through an integration with a LIMS system, can be made to “communicate” things about their status to a user, like needs for calibration, maintenance or expired user training certificates. So although the internet of things for the household may still be in the future, the combination of a modern LIMS system and a platform independent instrument integration tool (*LabVantage Connect), an “Internet of laboratory instruments”  can be just normal daily laboratory operations.

Our team has connected thousands of instruments with a LIMS

In our team for laboratory instrument integrations, we’ve connected thousands of instruments with a LIMS. We’ve standardized integrations to a very high level, but naturally are requests for integrations are somewhat unique. In general, you may say that;   

  • Connecting laboratory instruments with a LIMS isn’t as difficult as most people might think
  • BUT, it can be tricky, so experience and the right tools count
  • After an instrument is connected, you might think why you didn’t do this before.

*LabVantage Connect is a platform independent integration tool, which has already been successfully connected with over 400 different types of instruments. LabVantage Connect can also be used to communicate with robots, other systems and databases.

Let us know if you’d like to talk how your laboratory instruments could be connected with your LIMS.

 

Writer:

Tapio Rinnet, Team leader - Connect