Advances in medical research today are growing exponentially in complexity and number. Leading-edge thinkers must focus on their research rather than in supporting technology and equipment, or administrative tasks.

Many of the top institutions generating research breakthroughs still suffer from the overhead and distraction of paper-based laboratory workflow administration. From keeping track of expenses against an existing grant, or billing of equipment use to external entities and researchers, it all puts a burden on creativity and productivity. Add to this having to manage adherence to research protocols and regulations and the result is time consumed by activities not related to the essence of the research itself.

Stone Bond Technologies can help, though its line of award-winning products that facilitate the management of workflows and the integration with key information.

EE-LIMS™ a fully configurable data management and business process automation software tool designed to adapt and tailor to fit a customer’s particular requirements. EE-LIMS automates and captures best practice workflows and manages data capture and administrative activities for laboratories. When combined with an overall Enterprise Enabler® (EE) system, EE-LIMS allows for the laboratory workflow to connect to leading edge instrumentation, external data and enterprise billing systems.

Some of EE-LIMS features useful in Life Sciences Research are shown below.

Security

Segregation of duties is an important aspect of security and compliance for many institutions. EE-LIMS offers role-specific authentication by supporting up to five different user roles, which include:

For example, AD and PI are responsible for authorizing user accounts. Each user role has a set of base permissions which can be easily configured. EE-LIMS also includes a built-in authentication module but can be switched to LDAP or Active Directory authentication if desired. Full password encryption is also supported.

Audit Trails
EE-LIMS can store and display audit trail history for all changes on events related to security request workflows. EE-LIMS maintains audit trails related to records, settings, and changes made. Administrators can easily track events though the use of electronic signatures of the pertinent users, containing timestamps to facilitate searching.

EE-LIMS maintains audit trails related to records, settings, and changes made. Administrators can easily track events though the use of electronic signatures of the pertinent users, containing timestamps to facilitate searching.

Compliance
EE with EE-LIMS laboratories can better adhere to changing regulatory environments, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Health Plan Employer Data Information Sets (HEDIS), HL7 messaging standards, and EDI to insurers and third party labs.

Sample Tracking & Management
EELIMS has a tightly integrated sample tracking/management module. Samples can be manually entered by the user or uploaded from a file or set of archives. Each sample is uniquely identifiable in the system and can be processed through any number of service requests. EE-LIMS can be configured to capture information related to sample tracking according to the specific needs of the laboratory.

Inventory Management
The management of inventories of lab supplies and consumable resources is a priority. EE-LIMS offers the option of an inventory management module that can be easily configured, to comply with the client’s needs.

Equipment Scheduling
Registered and authorized users can schedule usage time on available equipment through EE-LIMS’ Equipment Scheduling Module. Each item can have its own calendar for scheduling.

Administrators can manage the daily use schedule for each resource, including “day use” and “night use” scheduling. Administrators can configure “equipment day start" and “equipment day end" as well, with separate fees or charges for each type of use.

Administrators can also schedule downtime for equipment maintenance. Scheduled downtime can be applied to the equipment calendar and disallow service requests during downtime. Each equipment resource available for scheduling supports a graphical calendar, which displays scheduled appointments and downtime. As appropriate, some EE-LIMS roles have read-only access to view current appointments and scheduled downtime, while administrators enjoy full rights.

Billing and Accounting
Administrators have the ability to run billing cycles on demand through EE-LIMS. They can select all or individual requests items for billing, and have the ability to ‘Re-Bill’ a work request. If a work request is ‘Re-Billed’, it allows for the issuance of a credit or debit to an account. The output of a billing cycle can be viewed in two ways, in an Excel sheet or in a fixed width text format. EE-LIMS can also be readily integrated to different billing systems.

Service requests submitted by end-users have a billing account associated with them. EE-LIMS will not allow a user to submit a request with out a billing account number, providing enhanced billing control.

Multi-lab Management
EE-LIMS supports running multiple core labs on a single instance. This implements a single sign-on facility for all of the labs, requiring only one user registration.

Reporting
EE-LIMS provides flexible reporting features that allow for specific customization, and are easy to export to common formats.

For example, reports can be generated by: