oa Editorial [Hot Topic: Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) (Guest Editor: Carl Hull)]

I was asked to serve as the guest editor to assemble a selection of manuscripts to fill a complete issue of “Combinatorial Chemistry & High Throughput Screening” that would focus on Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) and data management. This process started in the Spring of 2010 and several laboratories, experts and vendors were invited to participate with submissions. At first, it appeared that we would end up with more articles than a single issue could handle as 17 different authors had agreed to submit a manuscript. However, I quickly learned that many authors would drop out along the way. People of all industries are very busy and even though there is credibility in having peer-reviewed articles published, for many, the time required to do this is just not available. By the time we reached our first deadline for submissions, 9 of the authors had dropped out. During the next few months, we conducted a double blind peer review process where 3 more authors dropped out or were eliminated by their peers. The 5 articles that were finally approved have gone through a rigorous referee process and have been deemed worthy for publishing. LIMS and data management means something different to nearly every laboratory manager which is why there are so many different types of LIMS solutions in the marketplace. Change is the one thing that has been a constant over the past 18 years that I have been involved in laboratory automation. No matter what your laboratory is doing today, very likely, you will be doing something different in a few months down the road. One laboratory that I worked with went through a rigorous compliance audit for accreditation in their industry. The audit went very well and they were pleased with the assessment. About 6 months later I was talking to the system administrator and asked him how much of his system had evolved and changed since the audit. He told me that about 80% of the system had been tweaked, extended, changed, revised or optimized - in just 6 months! I knew that change was constant but I did not realize how big of a factor it was. When seeking for the right LIMS for your lab, the best approach is to talk to many peers and colleagues to find out what is working for them and what is not. While the industry is full of horror stories of implementations that were never successful or way over budget, there are also many success stories of laboratories that are being well-served by their systems....