Paperless lab goes mobile
Name Saskia Tyler
Company STARLIMS Germany
Email saskia.tyler(at)starlims.com
Abstract
With all the devices like smartphones and tablet PCs the mobile use of LIMS or LIMS related systems for labs has become reality. There are a lot of LIMS vendors advertising mobile solutions for their system or it is even sold as a standalone product just for mobile devices.
Almost all of the app suppliers for LIMS systems provide the functionality to do sampling in the field, to check your samples in the lab when you are at home or provide a result entry on the go. Technically there are three options to create an app: native apps, web apps, and a mixture using tools like phone gap. All of them have their advantages and disadvantages. Native apps can only be sold via the official App selling platform of the Operating systems (like App Store or Android Market) and they are configurable but because of the licenses and terms of use, a customization for each customer is not possible. So most of the suppliers will go for web apps and mixed approaches because the development costs are lower and customization is possible.
The device sensors are used to enable this functionality; most common is the use of GPS and also the camera for scanning barcodes. Other sensors are available for those apps and are an interesting addition to the functionality of a LIMS. (Motion sensor, Recording capabilities, GPS, RFID readers,…).
At the moment mobile devices are more often used as phones when it comes to business. The use of those devices will increase because the trend for cloud computing and online software is growing and the client computers for those system don’t need that much computing power anymore. More sensors will become available either build in or as external devices so that a minilab on the phone will be our vision of the near future.