As laboratories focus increasingly on cost and quality, instrument linking software is becoming more applicable. With changes in technology, there has been a move towards client/server architectures and an almost universal use of PCs. Here, Phil Goddard looks at some of the technical and commercial reasons for the continued growth in this area.
When the laboratory information management system (LIMS) was in its evolutionary stages, there was a general belief that instrument linking was the key to this new technology. As a result, many instrument vendors were early producers of LIMS and moves were made to make the vision real.
Unfortunately, the linking process in general was a great deal more complex than the development groups had envisaged. Worse, it required even more on-site time from skilled implementers than LIMS itself. Early interest flagged and, as a consequence, instrument linking has trailed LIMS in both development and market acceptance. It also tends to be in phase two of any LIMS implementation and as a consequence will always tend to lag behind in a growing LIMS market. Most instruments are still not interfaced even where there are compelling reasons for doing so.
However, instrument linking software is currently going through a period of growth. As developments occur and laboratories become more cost and quality conscious, the products are finding wider applicability.
PCs and networks
In the early days LIMS was typically hosted on minicomputers with dumb terminals. With changes in technology, there has been a move towards client/server architectures and an almost universal use of PCs as the LIMS terminal. The general familiarity in the laboratory of PCs being networked through to LIMS is significant. At the same time, Windows-based PCs have become ubiquitous on analytical instrumentation certainly for the more complex products (Fig. 1).
So the networked PC has become the de facto focus of instrument linking. The performance and other capabilities (for example storage and memory) are such that link software can be produced without significant limitations being placed on it by its platform. As an example, in our software we can handle 10 configurable calculation passes when we are reporting results. Ten years ago we had to worry about how fast the screen refreshed. Most LIMS have improved capabilities for interfacing to external software packages. This has not, in general, made instrument interfacing easier. However, it does mean a more secure and robust implementations of third-party links. This has been a significant improvement.
The LIMS market is still very fragmented (for products attempting to do essentially the same job) and tends to elevate average linking costs above what it would otherwise be. Many LIMS vendors offer instrument linking products of their own but these tend to be based on older technology and many are also supplying third party solutions for more difficult applications.
With a few notable exceptions, instrument software has added no improvements over the years to make interfacing easier or more robust. It is our belief that, if anything, modern software is more difficult to link. A worrying trend is that manufacturers are encrypting sequence and result files and are not providing the capabilities to read and write them.
It is our belief that commercial pressures will force instrument suppliers to allow better communication with the outside world, but it is not happening yet. It used to be believed that the main job of interfacing software was to change file (or serial data stream) formats. So, for example, if an instrument reported its results in one format, and LIMS wanted to receive input in another format, then that was the link software's job no more, no less. However, when products were delivered that essentially did just this job, their applicability was severely restricted to just the simplest of tasks.
It is clear that there has to be a significant amount of capability within the link. The operations that have to be automated when setting up an instrument or dealing with results are far beyond the combined current capabilities of current instruments and LIMS.
An obvious example in this context is generating the aright' result to send to LIMS. It comes as a surprise for most people that most LIMS/instrument combinations are incapable (for various reasons) of generating the results that are required without manual intervention of some type. Any omission in capabilities must be provided by the link software. These and countless other issues must be countered in order to provide a universal interfacing solution. Functionality is improving with time and experience and the industry is now closer to general solutions.
Developments in this area are having less effect on instrument interfacing software than elsewhere. When doing installations, the link provider still needs to be with the instrument and the analysts. It is also problematical that internet access rarely reaches as far as the instrument PC. Support and software delivery are areas where the internet has enabled continued improvements in services. More direct benefits of the Web are less obvious but present nevertheless.
For us, this is particularly true in the area of driver technology. We use installable drivers (similar in concept to those used for printers, soundcards, etc, in Windows) for LIMS and instrument specific issues. The latest drivers are supplied on the internet and can be downloaded by customers when LIMS or instruments change. With the cost savings and benefits of scale, we expect that over the next few years that we will be able to hold current Drivers for most commercially-available LIMS and instruments and to supply them free. This would have been impractical without the internet.
There are also forces at work within the customer base. Pressure on costs continues and there is a greater interest in real analytical quality. Most laboratory managers would agree that, in most cases, instrument linking can provide improved quality at lower cost (Fig. 2).
Customers understand the cost-benefit issues much better now. Those industries that have been under the most pressure commercially (contract, environmental analysis) have a greater usage of linking software. The benefits can be huge. For example, we rarely install software that has a payback period of less than 12 months. This is coupled with improved job satisfaction for analysts, demonstrably better analytical quality and improved turnaround times. In industries that have adopted most effectively, we see that for reasonable throughput laboratories with good instrumentation that they spend some 30 per cent of the cost of the LIMS on instrument linking.
Other industries that have not been under such intense pressure pharmaceuticals are a good example are less advanced in instrument linking. If anything, the intrinsic benefits are stronger here because such industries tend to have higher laboratory cost bases. As commercial pressures rise for these companies, we expect to see fast growth in this market segment. There are no significant technical problems with linking in these areas. In fact because of uniformity of methodology the applications are simpler than average.
The future
It is quite likely that the instrument linking business will be larger than LIMS at some stage during the next few years. In part, this will be a result of catching up for those LIMS users who have not embraced the technology yet.
The increased level of adoption will allow the link software vendors to offer more cost-effective solutions and ones that are more tailored to particular applications.
Dr Phil Goddard is managing director of Contemporary Solutions Ltd, 13 Bolton Road East, Port Sunlight, Wirral, CH62 4RU, UK, tel +44 (0) 151 643 8001, fax +44 (0) 151 643 1155, E-mail philg@csols.com. Contemporary Solutions Ltd provides software for analytical laboratories, including Link for LIMS which is designed to link any instrument to any LIMS.
