Clarkston’s team of quality and compliance consultants have highlighted the top lab informatics trends that businesses should consider. See an excerpt of the trends report below, and read all 4 trends for 2025 by downloading the full report here.

2025 Lab Informatics Trends

Laboratory Informatics, or Lab Informatics, uses technology to improve efficiencies via automation and streamlined processes, taking advantage of data analytics while ensuring compliance. Some of these tools include Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS), Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELN), Lab Execution Systems (LES), Chromatography Data Systems (CDS), and many others. Organizations are recognizing the need for more robust laboratory systems; therefore, Lab Informatics is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.1% between 2024 and 2030. In this report, we will focus on 2025 Lab Informatics trends, looking at platform diversification, Lab 4.0, and advanced technologies. 

Trend #1: Diversification of LIMS Platforms

Competition in the LIMS space is on the rise which has resulted in noticeable strategy adjustments among the top vendors. Vendors are increasingly diversifying their platforms in an attempt to become the one-stop-shop for laboratory informatics.   

Veeva, for example, released their LIMS platform in Fall 2022, which has allowed them to increase their market coverage as a vendor. Still in its infancy, they are continuing to add functionality to become a competitor in the market. On a similar note, Confience recently acquired Computing Solutions, Inc, allowing them to strengthen their position in the chemicals and the food & beverage spaces. Benchling has also been investing in their platform to expand functionality for GxP laboratories, while LabVantage and LabWare have made significant progress in the Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI) spaces, challenging the need for additional analytics software.  

The diversification of these platforms should benefit the customer, but this does pose some additional questions to consider when selecting a vendor or investing further into an existing platform. Laboratories typically have multiple specialized software systems, creating an architecture landscape that is time consuming, and potentially challenging and/or expensive to maintain. Each system needs careful selection, implementation, proceduralizing, and identification of staff to support. Organizations should consider vendor investments in platform growth when selecting a solution or continuing to invest in a current solution through increased enhancements. Organizations selecting a new vendor in 2025 should have an opportunity to simplify their landscape and reduce overhead.  

Diversification allows for a few critical benefits for your organization, such as: 

• Allows multiple business functions to use the same platform, such as Research and Development (R&D) and Quality Control (QC) 
• Easier enforcement of data governance as master data can be maintained in a single platform 
• Streamlined approach to implement cross functional workflows 
• Harmonization of processes governing the maintenance of your systems 
• Significant simplification of support structure and overhead costs 

Many of the commercial LIMS vendors now provide options of some combination of LIMS, ELN, LES, SDMS, Analytics, and Reporting tools across multiple markets, such as Pharmaceuticals, Oil & Gas, Food & Beverage, and Personal Care, to name a few. Those vendors not investing in diversification of their platform will likely see challenges with growth or struggle to hold their position in the market. 

Trend #2: Lab 4.0

Integrations in Lab Informatics continue to gain momentum as organizations drive towards seamless laboratory operations. We are in the landscape of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0, where digital technologies, such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, and automation are incorporated into industrial and manufacturing processes. These technologies are also becoming prominent in the laboratory space, a subsection called Lab 4.0, resulting in higher productivity, greater employee satisfaction, and cost reductions, and allowing labs to operate with end-to-end automation. 

One of the main technologies for Lab 4.0 is the IoT, which relates to all the physical components of the laboratory (instruments, systems, applications, etc.) to be incorporated into one central network. This facilitates automating laboratory processes so systems can communicate across LIMS, ELN, CDS, and other instruments, for example, seamlessly passing data, driving higher productivity, and eliminating transcription errors from instrument data. Laboratories working with this type of ecosystem also gain the benefit of cost reduction due to the decline in errors and retesting, saving on resources and laboratory inventory. Additionally, having all systems integrated into one network allows for full traceability in Lab Informatics. Another benefit of Lab 4.0 is being able to monitor instruments and processes in real time, recognizing errors, issues, or where results have an outlier. Having immediate knowledge of these types of errors, the lab becomes efficient and high-quality, gaining a competitive edge. Adding in automated processes and use of robotics, the lab can become a seamless end-to-end operation with little to no human interaction on the bench for a “lights out” operation. Continue reading by downloading the full report below.

Download the Full 2025 Lab Informatics Trends Report Here

Read last year’s LIMS Trends Report here.

Contributions from Rick Curtis