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My girlfriend is a microbiologist in a lab doing a lot of work with Dengue virus. She just finished a bunch of compound screenings that turned up no results. Basically (talking out my rear end now) they modeled a (or a bunch of) compound(s) on a computer and what would be required for them to form. They can ordered a bunch of chemicals/bacteria/whatever sloshed it all together then started testing to see if the compound they were looking for formed. How often does this kind of work fail to show any positive results? Secondly, I work for a LIMS company, we are used by tons of QA labs that run the gamut from food, pharma, water, etc. What is your take on LIMS, does it help/hurt you, etc?
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Feb 24, 2011 18:18
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Good point, she was a little surprised they rewarded her for finishing the job with a $75 in gift cards when it was super easy and they didn't find any of the compounds they were looking for. That was what made me curious I guess.
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Feb 24, 2011 23:11
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I'm all for some LinkedIn networking amongst you lab people, if you let me in on it too. My old boss is HUGE into LinkedIn and he's more or less the COO now, help me look good connecting to you scientist people! Just know that in 5-10 years I'll be trying to sell you software, suckers. Also, any of you guys in the Philadelphia area? We have tons of pharma in the area as well as a lot of universities all clustered around. To contribute actual lab chat, one of my customers is from a state/county water treatment plant and his job, well his staff now that he's higher up, is basically to go collecting samples of water from all over the state and then analyze them. I'm sure it pays crap and is pretty mundane lab work, but they get to have adventures! So if you guys are really fed up with big pharma you could always go looking to be a poor state employee...
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Mar 3, 2011 17:20
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Hah, LIMS, I work for one of the top three LIMS companies in the world. Like I said before, I'll try to sell you guys LIMS in the future. Recently I've seen a lot of discussion around Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) vs LIMS. I guess I didn't realize but a lot of ELN systems almost function as LIMS on their own. Your company might be more interested in an ELN rather than a full on LIMS system if you're talking about work flow/experiment paper work. We have a customizable lab notebook that integrates with our system, basically we'll take any paper form you currently use and reproduce it on an ELN. The notebook then updates the LIMS. We've also just recently made our system available through iPads and soon I think we're going to smart phones. We're also on the cusp of releasing the first MAJOR cloud based LIMS. If you guys have any specific questions about LIMS I can answer them or I can certainly find out very easily. The big regulatory issue I see a lot is 21 CFR 11 which is the regulation for electronic records in pharma. I see a lot of ISO #'s thrown around, but am not super familiar with those, where as 21 CFR 11 was drummed into my head when I first got hired. Lyon fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Mar 27, 2011 |
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Mar 27, 2011 15:22
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Bastard Tetris posted:I'll bring it to his attention. From what I've seen custom in-house LIMS are great, until the developers leave and you need major changes. That's the primary advantage of purchasing a system from one of the major/established players. My company has also managed to stay pretty industry friendly, we have a pharma system that we'll have IQ, OQ, and PQ done in 90 days, same thing for QM labs and Bio Banking labs. Pittcon promo video from my company. I might edit this out later if I start feeling uncomfortable. Sundae posted:We use a Citrix ELN system now instead of handwritten lab notebooks. Your posts are my favorite in this thread. Your company sounds so awesomely inefficient based on your posts, it makes me chuckle every time.
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Mar 28, 2011 18:50
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Sundae posted:Inefficient doesn't even begin to describe it. I'm at PFE. Hah. I have yet to touch PFE because I'm brand new, not very technical, and a small time player in our company. I'm sure you've at least seen some people from my company as you're our largest customer. Do you actively use our system or know anyone from my company? I'm not using any names because that way I can just edit out that link later if I want. seacat posted:This guy's got nothing on me I guess there's no reason labs should be any better than any other segment of the business world... that does sound pretty terrible though.
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Mar 28, 2011 20:19
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half of the reports I fill out magically vanish into thin air. Forms get revised with no rhyme or reason, nobody tells anybody this and I get stuck re-writing a stack of 30 papers on a fairly regular basis; I also constantly remind the lab manager that I can't sign off on stuff she is rewriting (ie blatantly faking data) because I wasn't yet working for the company in 2008. I only now got a GLP lab notebook, after begging for one for about a year. Important data is often written on post-it notes and scraps of paper. Expensive pieces of equipment sit gathering dust while technicians do the work manually at 10% of the speed because the lab manager is afraid of trying anything new (then why buy the drat extraction manifold in the first place?!). We haven't seen anyone from QM for over 3 weeks. All of the documentation is perpetually anywhere from 2-6 months behind and I am still getting documents to file for early 2010...
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Solkanar512 posted:Seriously, I figured that I'd be joining the ranks of those rugged explorers searching for new knowledge and hope for humanity and all that poo poo. What's your CS experience like? Are you good with Oracle, SQL Server, PL\SQL, Java, JSP, Scripting, HTML? Sundae posted:I've definitely seen stuff from your company floating around in the analytical labs, and I've seen your name pop up in our purchasing system before. My department doesn't really use a lot of the standard equipment / supplies, though, so we tend to have rather odd suppliers. (I'm in late-stage development, so I'm typically involved with sourcing from Mallinckrodt, J&M, Colorcon, or equipment manufacturers these days, especially since we have an internal supply chain to handle most of the ordering process.) Typically any procurement stuff I have to do is abnormal stuff where our regular networks can't handle it. (Custom orders, etc.) Yeah you guys our are largest customer by far for SQL*LIMS, I think you have 26 sites with our LIMS deployed. I think mostly for QM/QC testing but I'm sure we're in some of the other random labs just due to volume of licenses you own. Sorry to clutter up this thread with all the LIMS non-sense, I find my industry and labs in general really interesting. Makes me want to go back and take some chemistry or biology so I can have a better understanding, but then I figure I won't be in this business forever and it would be a waste of money.
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Mar 28, 2011 20:47
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It would have been Applied Biosystems SQL*LIMS previously and then LabVantage bought SQL*LIMS from AB/Life Technologies last year. So the software is SQL*LIMS and the company would be LabVantage these days. I think we have someone on-site at PFE and we're constantly sending our PSO and other technical people your way. Mostly NJ and NY but all over the country too.
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Mar 28, 2011 20:58
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Gotta love the business world... you should rubber band 8 Advil's together and ask her to swallow it. Just got to book my first ever work travel/conference down in Charleston, I'll get to hang out with a lot of you laboratory folk. From the sounds of it you all probably drink heavily due to work stress, so at least I'll have that going for me down there. I also confirmed that my boss likes to get banged up when I was up at HQ the other day.
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Apr 28, 2011 17:01
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Sundae posted:I swear, nothing here ever makes sense. I met six of your "co-workers" this week. Two guys were from your R&D group up in Boston, a couple from Michigan?, and two from NY who were very much IT side instead of lab. It was at our customer conference, three of them gave presentations on our LIMS or on working with us in general. They were all pretty cool. I'll just throw it back out there for the thread, if anyone has questions surrounding LIMS/ELN/Acronyms/etc ask away and I'll get you an answer!
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May 24, 2011 19:45
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kaptainkaffeine posted:I'm a software dev for an academic genetics service core. We've built custom LIMSs for both internal and external use. It's interesting to look at OTS packages out of the context of my own lab and see how they've abstracted the types of things that we write to be very specific for efficiency. So are you a biorepository and lab then? In regards to that... does your LIMS primarily do sample tracking from start (collection site) to finish, data storage, work flow management, regulatory/experiment/clinical reports, etc? All of that or some of that? I know there are some bioinformatics professional certificates you can get. My old boss has one from Stanford. Not to sure of any anything beyond that or how relevant the certificate is.
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Jun 2, 2011 06:27
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Your posts continue to amaze... sounds like PFE is being run by, well, retards or maybe monkeys.
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Jun 23, 2011 19:48
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Bastard Tetris posted:PFE's fucktarded management is the reason I stayed out of Pharma. We (I'm the LIMS guy) work with a lot of mid size pharma and they seem to be doing pretty well right now. For some reason the ones I'm dealing with have all seemed to be clustered out on the west coast. It's a shame to hear what's going on with big pharma as PFE and Merck are two of our biggest customers. Bastard Tetris posted:Trip report: Our insanely toxic volatile organic experiments haven't poisoned anyone or lit my lab on fire yet! YAY What kind of information outputs do your new fancy incubators give? Will you be interfacing them with your LIMS? For a lot of BioBanking/Life Sciences we monitor freeze/thaw cycles for samples using an interface to the storage unit, I don't think we've currently interfaced with any incubators but we could.
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Jun 29, 2011 21:19
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LET'S GET REALLY loving SWEET INCUBATORS
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Vasler! My new best friend... I need to talk to you. I was just given a new task of looking for new opportunities within the federal government. I'm in the LIMS industry, is this something you'd have some insight into?
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Jun 30, 2011 14:24
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Bastard Tetris posted:Edit: Also I'm asking my head of R&D to give me a completely absurd capital budget on my birthday, hooray! Apparently it is somewhere around 60-75% of the entire quarter's expenditures. My field is not cheap Want a new LIMS? I'll take that increased budget off your hands! Lyon fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Aug 1, 2011 |
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Aug 1, 2011 00:03
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So this is random and possibly a little too involved but is there any chance some of you guys could explain to me how your labs work? I come from a non-science background and working in the LIMS industry leaves me a little befuddled at times. So basically I guess what would be considered a sort of lab "audit". Where do your samples come from? What types of materials are you normally working with? Do you have a concrete method of taking ownership and auditing what happens to the sample while in the lab? What tests do you normally perform on your samples? Is all of this done manually? Do you record your results on paper, ELN, paper and then transcribed to a LIMS/LIS/CDS/ELN/whatever? What are audit trails like on tests? Are the results checked and approved by managers? What happens when a sample doesn't fall within specification limits? How are your results and data communicated to the business side? Things like that, particularly in non-pharma qc/qa labs as those are the ones I'm most experienced in. Feel free to include any steps I left out! Hah.
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Sep 20, 2011 04:19
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I recently switched jobs within my company (I'm the LIMS guy) to become a technical trainer. Maybe one day I'll get to meet someone from SA in a training class hah.
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Dec 20, 2011 17:21
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Sundae posted:I've been messing with LinkedIn Jobs as it picks up steam, and it has one nifty feature that I haven't seen before: when the recruiter picks your application to read, it e-mails you and lets you know that (Company X) is viewing your application. Kinda cool! That is an awesome new feature that they did not have when I used it during my job search in September of '10. I got 3 job offers using LinkedIn jobs, two on the same day, and one after I accepted my current position. Granted, I am/was entry level and don't have an impressive skill set. Previously all I had going for me was proficiency with SalesForce.com and major experience in cold calling. For you science types with actual skills LinkedIn jobs might not be the best method but I had amazing success with it.
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Dec 20, 2011 19:43
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Did Applied Biosystems separate from Life Technologies or is this just a branding thing? I thought AB and Invitrogen merged into Life Tech. I guess I should just Google this, probably a branding thing.
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Jan 9, 2012 18:20
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quote:LIMS question for the guys on here. We use a custom build and it infuriates my lab that we cannot insert images. Is this just a crap build or just something we've been told to live with? Is this an in-house built LIMS? Where do you want to insert the images? Into CoA reports, samples, other data items? Do you want them to actively display or just be attached to a sample as a file? Our LIMS gives you the option to attach any kind of files to samples/projects/etc and I'm sure I could configure it to display an image anywhere. Our interface is all java server pages generated from the app server and you can make completely custom pages.
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Jan 29, 2012 22:00
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Hey hey! Our system is great! Are you talking strictly about navigating and operating the system or the whole building all the master data part? I do think our new system is pretty easy to use but LIMS are definitely clunky. I think mostly because of the wide array of data they have to be able to record and then chain of custody/e-signatures. For the scientist I think our system would be fairly painless though.
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Jan 29, 2012 23:13
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I sell LIMS which I think I made evident with my tone hopefully if you didn't remember my previous posts. I'll have to look into what you're asking for, but it should be fairly easy in our LIMS. I'm not sure about the gels because I'm not super familiar with our reagents (which is where I think that would fall under) module. I think my company is one of the top three LIMS companies so we're expensive. What LIMS have you used? We recently partnered with Waters and directly interface with their Empower CDS. Lyon fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Jan 30, 2012 |
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Jan 30, 2012 00:50
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Yeah we should be able to either through our native instrument integration or if the instrument is too complex via an additional piece of software which I think we license based on # of instruments. Basically we write drivers for the different instruments for how to parse the output and where to find it. Then our instrument server grabs it and then the instrument server and our LIMS interface. Our stuff is probably a bit too pricey based on your expected budget but we do have a cloud offering coming out in the near future which should have a reduced cost.
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Jan 30, 2012 02:30
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Sadly we're probably talking about another year before a true SaaS offering will be available. We have a hosted option but that just cuts your capital expenditures for the hardware but leaves the licensing the same. Our licenses are... a bit pricey, even for named licenses (as opposed to concurrent). There will be a SaaS offering but we're just released a new product version so all of our resources are focused on that right now. It sounds like this could be right up a lot of smaller non-regulated labs alleys. Another major issue comes into how much configuration goes into a system. Most labs try to configure and custom code our solution to fit their exact needs perfectly. This can cost as much or more than software. But enough LIMS chat, everyone should tell more crazy lab stories. Edit: Quick thought, if anyone is interested just out of personal curiosity to see my company's software I could probably arrange it. I promise I won't try to sell anyone anything! Lyon fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Jan 31, 2012 |
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Jan 30, 2012 22:09
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If anyone is interested in seeing an 'industry leading' LIMS demoed I could do that for you fine folks. I am officially a technical trainer now so I'm trying to practice my presentation skills. I am pretty decent at showing the out of the box functionality and have been developing our bio banking module training course so if there are any takers let me know. Edit: Actually on second thought let me double check if this will get me fired or not :P.
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Apr 12, 2012 18:05
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I'm pretty sure if you're hourly it is illegal to not record hours worked/them not pay you for hours worked regardless of the industry.
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Jun 26, 2012 18:51
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Sales really is the best. But in the meantime while I'm out of the game I am still a technical trainer for one of the top three LIMS vendors. If anyone has any questions about LIMS (or has a strong LIMS background and wants a job) feel free to ask.
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Feb 4, 2013 03:42
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My company will be there and I live in Philadelphia so I'm going to see if I can make it in for a day or two if we have extra passes. Even if I don't I'd be down for meeting up in Philly if you'll be in town and bored.
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Feb 11, 2013 14:11
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bakersk8r6301 posted:What kind of work do you do? I'm looking to get out of the lab and find my niche in IT and/or the more technical behind the scenes work of life sciences/healthcare. I'm located in NYC if you happen to know of any openings? We are a software company that sells Laboratory Information Management Systems. I'm not sure how much interaction you've had with LIMS software in your career but if you aren't sure what that means then the easiest description is that the primary, or at least initial, function of a LIMS is sample management. Track the sample from its creation, through all of the testing/results entry, and finally to its disposal. You are left with a permanent virtual record of your sample and the results of your testing that is easily retrievable in case of any regulatory audit, comparison, etc. One of our goals is to make labs more automated, "paperless", and efficient. There is a ton of functionality beyond that, a LIMS is basically an ERP/MRP specialized for the lab but for simplicity's sake you can think of it as a big sample management system. If any of that sounds interesting to you and you have the required IT/tech skills we are pretty much always hiring Business Analysts to interface between the customer and our development staff. Feel free to contact me on gmail, username is ecksile.
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Mar 5, 2013 22:12
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Any of you at Pittcon today? I'm stopping in this morning to just see the conference. I'm sure the last day will be way less active than the other days but oh well. My coworkers were here all week but my management is sometimes goofy and I didn't get in on Monday then had to train people Tue and Wed.
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Mar 21, 2013 14:43
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Sundae posted:Freedom! I know most of my posts in this thread have devolved into whiny crap, but hooray for a huge promotion / move to another company! Where at in PA? I'm assuming Philadelphia area and possibly Collegeville? All the big guys have campuses up that way. If that is where you're bound and you have any questions about the area let me know, I live in the area and know some people who work at Glaxo and your old employer. Edit: Oh based on my reread you might be in West Chester, which is a very nice place. Lyon fucked around with this message at 16:58 on May 27, 2013 |
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May 27, 2013 16:48
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I'm moving to a Pennsylvania subsidiary of a very large pharma/med conglomerate based out of NJ, into a principal scientist role. Hell loving yes. I get to have Christmas and summers again! (My current company just told us that there would be no vacation requests honored between June 26 - Aug 19 due to shutdown timelines, and the winter shutdown always conflicts with Christmas / New Years by design.)
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I'm bored so if anyone has any questions about Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) I'd love to occupy some time answering them. I work at one of the 'Tier 1' LIMS companies as a technical trainer.
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Dec 19, 2013 21:20
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Tigren posted:What is LIMS, how much does it pay, and can I have a job? Hah well that was fast. LIMS is laboratory management software, specifically around sample management, but most of them have extended quite a bit beyond that narrow scope. The most common use for a LIMS is to track a sample from collection, to receipt, through all of the testing and the test results, review (print CoA), and then disposal. We also have modules for specific laboratory testing such as stability, QC batches, CAPA workflows, reagent/consumable tracking, instrument maintenance/calibration schedules, analyst training, etc. A LIMS becomes the repository for all of your samples, test results, specifications, etc. Pay depends on function and experience like anything else. What is your background? We are hiring Domain Experts and Business Analysts.
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Dec 19, 2013 21:33
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Vladimir Putin posted:What's the technical writer aspect of that like? Do you do documentation and that sort of thing? Well I'm a technical trainer, not a tech writer, so most of my writing is in PowerPoint slide decks and Word docs with hands-on exercises they perform on the system. My job is usually post-sale but pre-implementation (for new customers) and I go on site with a customer for three days and walk them through the basics of the system. Each topic starts with me explaining the system via slides and then they perform the exercises on a cloud hosted instance of the software. It is really cool because I've been to a ton of different labs and usually get to tour them and see the setups etc. Some look like sci fi movies (usually validated pharma environments) and others look like shop floors (a metals lab and an animal carcass rendering lab). TLDR; I write training specific materials but don't really get involved with the product documentation/help files/marketing materials. Lyon fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Dec 19, 2013 |
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Dec 19, 2013 22:39
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seacat posted:What's the going rates cheapest, a typical mid-range, and most expensive packages you offer? We have a makeshift LIMS out of a bunch of excel sheets. It works pretty well for a small (at this time) QC lab but I've never dicked around with a real LIMS system. I would love something that generates COAs for me. Our enterprise system is on the pricier side but we have a new hosted, locked down, basic system coming out soon which should be pretty cheap. For our enterprise system you're looking at about $5k/user (before any pricing negotiations anyway) for the OOB software not including the add-on purchasable modules and then however much in services to get the system configured for your specific workflow. Pricing hasn't been worked out yet for the new hosted system but it will be cheaper and much faster to implement since we don't really allow major configuration/customization, you have to adapt to us basically. Our price is pretty much standard for the major LIMS companies but there are hundreds of LIMS vendors so pricing runs a wide gamut. Basically with the big players you're paying for the experience and the fact that we aren't going anywhere so you won't have to worry about your LIMS not being supported.
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Dec 20, 2013 00:13
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Any of you going to Pittcon this year? I'll be there all week so if anyone wants to get a drink/organize a meetup let me know.
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Feb 24, 2014 16:41
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1024x768 posted:I'll be there this year - I'm a fourth year PhD student. Drinks would be cool. majestic12 posted:I live in Chicago I'll definitely have some company and customer obligations (I'll be there as a software vendor) but once I get my schedule sorted out we can plan some sort of happy hour or something. I'll be staying at the Hyatt Regency connected to the conference center but I'm pretty sure every night will end up in downtown Chicago at some point.
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Feb 25, 2014 18:51
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teardrop posted:Hi, I'm a QC chemist with a master's coming up on 3 years of experience, thinking about how to advance my career. Other than waiting 10 years trying not to die of boredom to get a lab manager position. LIMS is a weird thing to get into, it seems like to get started you either need to transition into it organically or join a LIMS vendor and then leave to work for a customer. I say that because off the top of my head the three biggest players all use different technology stacks... LabWare is Small Talk based, StarLIMS is .NET, and LABVANTAGE is Java. The general idea between all Laboratory Information Management Systems is the same but actually administering them is very different. I think your best bet would be to express interest in becoming a LIMS administrator/power user internally and transition from a lab role to a role in between lab and IT. You would essentially become an internal business analyst between the lab and the IT folks because you have the domain knowledge from the lab and you learned the tech lingo to communicate with IT. I work for a LIMS vendor in sales/training so if you have any specific questions I'll do my best to answer them.
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Apr 10, 2014 20:01
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What's a good way to learn about Analytical Service, Industrial Process QC, and Environmental Laboratories? My company just released a new product aimed specifically at small to medium sized laboratories and these are the primary target demographics. I get the general idea from working in the LIMS space for a while now but if I want to read more specifics are there any good forums/blogs/information sites in these areas? I guess really Analytical Service and Industrial Process QC labs are pretty straightforward for the most part but I'm a bit out of my depth with these Environmental Laboratories. I guess when it comes down to it they are all samples in -> results out but I would love to read up a bit more on this subject. Any recommendations for places to read up on general lab processes but also the business side of these labs as well?
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Sep 16, 2014 05:07
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Dik Hz posted:Anyone else going to PittCon? I'll be there hocking LIMS as far as I know.
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Jan 9, 2015 09:41
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