Which automated solutions?

[mrpj]

Hi

Are there any LIMS solutions for connecting and using existing equipment and instruments such as:

- Agilent GC-MS
- HPLC, LC-MS
- Journal databases (SQL database)

I've considered OpenLAB software from Agilent, how's that?

[unmgvar]

in simple the answer is yes
in long, the correct product will depend on mainly your demands of usage and if you need to be regulated and also the amount of budget you have
there are LIMS companies that will give you a full solution and also with ELN, and there are LIMS that you will need to use another company to help you for the entire control

agilent has both a LIMS and cds-ezchrom/chemstation, so they can combine the instrument and data process to the LIMS
do you have an IT department that can handle all this?
you will be far more dependent on them, and when you have a system wide crash it is pretty certain nothing will work ( expect at least 1-2 days per year like this)

[mrpj]

Is it possible to connect other instruments such as FT-IR instrument (Thermo) and Gilson GX-271 prepstation?

[unmgvar]

technically it depends on what you need
one thing that agilent will sell you is that you can control the instrument via their setup
it is basically seamlessly connecting their ECM to the ezhchrom or chemstation and other few softwares
remember that what you mainly want is not to do an instrument control via the LIMS or ELN
but to get the needed info from the other softwares directly into the fields of interest in the LIMS and ELN

this is generally done using a virtual PDF printing or other type of data transfer protocol
in most cases you can get whatever you want,
pictures, data, numbers,
but you need to set it up at installation or to learn how to do it after install.

you need to decide to what level you want the instruments interconnected
direct control of the instruments using the LIMS looks cool in a sales presentation
remember you want a Laboratory Information Management System- so the main need is data transfer, chromatograms and results

[varossf]

Hi, technically you can connect any file-based system to OpenLAB ECM (Enterprise Content Management). This by means of the OpenLAB Scheduler agent that runs at scheduled times to collect data. Database systems require special interfaces that either can be programmed or ECM pick up the archives from the database
OpenLAB ECM provides a virtual printer environment that allows you to print from any device to PDF. These PDF's will be stored in ECM. ECM allows you to build extraction templates to extract key values from the PDF and stores these in the database.
These values can be either pulled from the database by external programs or exported from ECM. TO automate export the workflow manager (BPM: Business Process Manager) of ECM can help you there.

Many Agilent applications (GC/MS, ChemStation, EZChrom, ICP/MS) can use ECM as their direct storage location. Files are then stored secured and immediate in the ECM environment without the need of a Scheduler.

Now it depends on what you expect from a LIMS interface!