You have just completed a LIMS implementation that has transformed your labs with automated processes and testing procedures. As a result, there has been a significant investment of time, money, and effort to ensure your system is built for the long haul. How should you maintain your LIMS to best reap the rewards of this investment? Should you partner with a LIMS AMS provider?

From experience, we know that a successful LIMS requires planning well beyond go-live. Our series on Green Master Data highlights the precise decisions that need to be made to best harmonize across sites and labs, provide consistent reporting and trending, and reduce implementation and maintenance costs. Efficient LIMS master data simplifies objects in a way that they can be reused across products and labs. Making updates to shared master data must consider the effects changes will have on the complex web of objects working in unison.

The efficiency of your LIMS master data management team can and should reflect the efficiency of the data they are managing. Often, we see lab analysts trained to become LIMS technical resources after go-live, taking on the bulk of the master data management process which requires handling requirement gathering, prioritization of requests, master data updates, migrations, testing and deployment. Relying on lab personnel to take all of this on can prove costly in training and overwhelming in scope. While certainly a viable path forward, is there potential for a master data management team and process that better utilizes the strengths of all those involved?

Partnering with a LIMS AMS Provider

In partnering with a LIMS Application Managed Services (AMS) provider to supply master data technical support, you can best leverage the time and expertise of your in-house master data team by having them focus on their strengths: 

• Understanding the impacts of method and SOP updates to master data
• Translation of lab documentation into master data requirements
• Demo sign-off and verification testing
• Prioritization of master data requests

By taking the weight of the technical aspects away, they can focus on truly managing the process. In turn, this allows you to leverage the technical strengths of your LIMS AMS provider: 

• Deep knowledge of LIMS master data hierarchy
• Impact analysis of changes to shared objects
• Use of green master data practices to ensure new objects follow the same strategy as existing objects
• Ability to handle complex calculation updates

Additional benefits of partnering with a LIMS AMS provider include: 

• Forgoing costly technical training for lab personnel on your in-house master data team
• Ability to scale technical resourcing to meet master data requirements
• Technical support for system enhancements outside of master data requirements

Partnering with a LIMS AMS provider can help you better navigate the complexities of the master data management process and empower your lab personnel to focus on making the best use of their skills within it.

Learn More About Our LIMS AMS Services

Contributions by Sam Wellington