Laboratory Information Management Systems- a survey

The management ofinstruments, especially if centralized into one analytical environment, can demand commercial expertise as well as scientific knowledge. Considerable quantities of analytical data have to be acquired, manipulated, compiled and reported, in addition to such separate administrative functions as operational budgets, cost control, staff functions, external communications, materials stores and inventory, literature updating, and so on. This leads to an obvious parallel with more commercially related environments, such as stockbrokers, solicitor’s offices and banks.

The management of instruments, especially if centralized into one analytical environment, can demand commercial expertise as well as scientific knowledge. Considerable quantities of analytical data have to be acquired, manipulated, compiled and reported, in addition to such separate administrative functions as operational budgets, cost control, staff functions, external communications, materials stores and inventory, literature updating, and so on. This leads to an obvious parallel with more commercially related environments, such as stockbrokers, solicitor's offices and banks.
Commercial environments have adopted data transfer and computerized records as a matter of course. As pressures increase to minimize paperwork, and maximize efficiency, elimination of paper records is becoming a factor of survival in a highly competitive world. Analytical laboratories can be regarded as very little different from a purely commercial operation and yet only very recently have Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) been offered to the scientific world. However, it appears that the systems currently on offer are not necessarily the optimum solution for many laboratories.

Analytical laboratories
There is very little information available to the end user on laboratory size, numbers of personnel employed, types and distribution of instruments etc. One source of data is from surveys conducted by scientific journals [1], but these are naturally biased towards obtaining advertising revenue and are not specifically designed to provide information to the end user. Specialist marketing agencies also conduct surveys on a multi-client basis, but these are expensive and are never generally published. Similarly, major manufacturers also conduct private surveys: publication in this case is only likely to occur when some publicity gain is indicated, for example product X is used by more people than is its competitors.
The decision to install LIMS is probably the most important decision now faced by the laboratory manager. Unless based upon sound data about the industry, decision-taking becomes more of a lottery. It is obviously more desirable to make decisions based on fact, rather than to be swept along by market forces, gossip, or, even worse, because its fashionable. To aid this decision, a survey, specifically seeking intbrmation on current laboratory functions, was made. The ultimate objective was to relate laboratory functions to the costs of installing LIM systems. The survey was conducted from the Manchester Business School, as a part requirement of the part-time equivalent of the MBA degree. Questionnaire All questions were condensed onto a single sheet, with multi-choice answers designed to minimize the time involved to about 15 min. Laboratory managers could most easily answer the questions. The recipients were selected randomly from the UK-based Chromatographic Society membership list, and was restricted to British members only [2]. A total of 121 questionnaires were released. Each recipient was previously contacted by telephone. Whilst members of the Society tend to be of senior status, it was anticipated that, where necessary, recipients would refer to a higher authority. Some 50% of the total questionnaires mailed were returned within three weeks. A second telephone prompt resulted in a further 20% being returned, and a third telephone call, a further 10%. 121 questionnaires were sent out recipient did not have any major instruments 3 were completed and returned but not received 10 replied with a blank form and apology, principally due to non relevance to their circumstances 14 did not reply 91 replies received.

Market size
The relevance of sample size to actual market size is of importance. The UK has 3542 sites designated as research laboratories [3], and the USA 50 705 [4]. It is highly probable that most of these sites will contain an analytical function in some form, but many will not conform to the distribution of instruments in the sample, since the emphasis in this survey is primarily towards carbon-based analytical systems. Other locations not so specified may of course use instruments in a non-research sense: for quality control, plant control etc. The sample of 91 laboratories represents less than 3% of the total designated as UK research laboratories. Consequently, extrapolation in order to estimate, for example the total number of instruments in the UK (81 700 of which 32 680 are gas chromatographs), and in the USA 1"19 x 106 and 4.7 x 105 respectively, should not be regarded as a reasonable method of estimating total numbers. Regret-tably, however, the dearth of alternative data will almost certainly guarantee these data becoming enshrined in folklore and ultimately appearing as 'industry statistics'. Instrument types and distribution A total of 2099 major instruments were defined in the returns, of which 1552 were centralized, i.e. under the control of a single manager. The remainder (547) were on site but not centralized or directly controlled by the analytical manager. Thus the 'average' centralized laboratory has 17 major instruments installed, with a total of 23 on site. However, of the 10 blank forms returned with apologies (table 1), four were large laboratories, containing more than 50 instruments, and of which one was known to have more than 300 instruments. Consequently, all 'averages' will be an underestimate of the sample, and instrument distributions are therefore more relevant. Table 2 contains total numbers and percentages of specified instrument types. Where an instrument was mentioned less than six times (less than 0"4% of total sample), it was categorized under 'others'. Six techniques (gas chromatography, high-pressure liquid chromatography, ultra-violet, infra-red and atomic absorption spectroscopy and autoanalyser techniques totalled 86"6% of all).       Table 5 shows the numbers and types of personnel employed, with distributions indicated in figure 6. It was not clear from the survey whether these staff were exclusively employed in the centralized unit, or whether they also operated the non-centralized units. It has been assumed that the total 2033 employees stated operated all 2099 instruments.
An attempt was made to correlate the distribution of employees with numbers of instruments; some laboratories had as few as one person per three/four instru-% oFREOUE NEY   ments, others exceeded five employees per instrument. The highest ratio laboratories were checked, and confirmation received that considerable work other than purely analytical was also conducted. Conversely, the 'efficient' laboratory tended to concentrate entirely upon analytical operations. Nevertheless, most laboratories appeared to be regarded as a purely analytical laboratory by the remainder of the company. The statistics also indicated that the larger the laboratory, the lower the percentage of graduates employed.
Data inputs and reporting These were classified as outputs by instruments with an integral microprocessor (MCP) or computer, those operating through an analogue to digital convertor with printer output, and finally those without any digital outputs, classified as manually processed. Tables 6 and 7 provide percentage data for centralized and noncentralized instruments respectively. No relationship could be established between the percentage of MCP controlled instruments as a function of the number of instruments in the specified location. In terms ofdistribution, 1% of centralized laboratories had 100% manually processed outputs, whereas 7% had 100% MCP outputs; for non-centralized laboratories, 20% had 100% manually processed outputs, with 21% having 100% MCP outputs.  Where instruments had been data linked, the name of the equipment manufacturer was requested. Only six manufacturers were named more than once. Those mentioned once only in the total sample were not included. The popularity of the six are described in table 9 as a percentage of total systems installed. It was also possible to relate the named manufacturers with the average number of instruments in the laboratory, the average number of GCs and HPLCs available for linking in the laboratory, and the percentage of those available which were actually linked.  49% of centralized laboratories have installed at least one named data linking system, but only 39% of all GC/ HPLCs available were operating through a CPU, and, on average, only six instruments were linked. There appears to be considerable further scope for the data linking of instruments to an already purchased CPU.

Assessment of efficiency
Managers and operators were asked for their views of their data-handling methods. 53% of instrument operators were satisfied with their methods, but 57% of managers were not, dissatisfaction increasing as the number of instruments under their control increased.
Some 81% of managers were involved in interpretation, writing and checking of reports, whilst 73% felt that efficiency could be improved. Despite the high proportion stating that efficiency could be improved, some 68% of the total sample had not quantitatively evaluated the reasons for the efficiency shortfall. Upon prompting, the results of the scale of the efficiency problem are given in  Price managers prepared to pay Finally, recipients were asked whether they had estimated the price they were prepared to pay to overcome their lack of efficiency; it emerged that 71% had not yet made this assessment. This is not too surprising, since LIMS is conceptually very new, and very little information has been published. In addition, from a manager's position, research functions are notoriously difficult to cost. Accountants normally compile departmental costs, and impose them on the manager, few managers appear to agree with their derivation.
Although a very high proportion of recipients had not actually estimated costs, most were prepared to estimate a level of proposed expenditure. These are given in table 12.  Organized by the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering/Socit Canadienne du Gfinie Chimique, the conference will be held at the Calgary Convention Centre, and will consist of seven concurrent technical and general-interest sessions. The papers will cover a wide range of topics from fundamentals to industrial applications of chemical engineering. There will also be sessions relevant to the chemical, process, and energy industries. Several sessions, including one on government relations, will include invited speakers. The economic and Business Management Division (EBM) of the Chemical Institute of Canada is co-sponsoring and organizing several sessions on forecasts, forecasting and planning, petrochemicals, and the business side oflarge projects.
Technical sessions at the conference are planned on the following subjects: