How Integrated Data Management Systems Can Support Diagnostic Labs
Integrated data management systems can provide fast turnaround times, accurate audit trails, and full data provenance
What are the greatest informatics challenges that diagnostic labs face today?
I think the number one problem that we see is data silos. Typically, the more advanced diagnostic labs have their own home-grown system because they didn’t see any viable solution in the market. As genomics medicine becomes standard of care, especially in the treatment of cancer and rare diseases, we see molecular diagnostics growing rapidly. You want fast turnaround times and accurate audit trails and full data provenance. All of that is not easy to do when you have siloed systems and paper intermixed with Excel spreadsheets.
How is L7’s enterprise science platform (L7|ESP™) solving these challenges?
Traditionally, people use LIMS systems to manage the wet labs and then they use bioinformatics pipelines to manage the informatics analytical pipelines. L7 was created to break down this wall and create one integrated platform. We’ve now expanded our scope beyond breaking down this one wall between wet lab and dry lab to breaking down walls between sample management, sample accessioning, sample inventory management, reagent inventory management, freezer (location) management, analysis management, and lab intelligence. We’ve incorporated all of this into one unified, composable, and bimodal platform with a single data fabric called L7|ESP. It’s kind of like an operating system for the lab with different applications, so it’s a much more modern architecture to support the lab of the future where people don’t have to buy multiple different systems. We created one platform and LIMS just happens to be one app and there’s also an inventory management app and a location management app. Customers can pick and choose what apps they want, but all of the data in the lab, both scientific data and operational data, is in one place. We enable digitalization, workflow automation, and all of these other functions because we are a single platform with tremendous tech flexibility to support all the lab needs.
What prevents all labs from adopting an integrated data management system?
I think the main bottleneck is that customers already have an existing system. But even customers with existing systems are looking to use L7|ESP as an overlay system on top of their siloed systems to tie all of their siloed systems together, aka a scientific data management system. L7|ESP can replace existing legacy systems or overlay on top of those systems and give them a big-picture view of the entire lab. We have customers that are using it in both modes.
What types of diagnostic labs stand to benefit most from your platform?
Molecular diagnostics and bioanalytical testing labs—so, people doing qPCR for COVID-19 testing or whole genome sequencing for rare diseases or RNA sequencing for cancer and other diseases. Our system is also fully regulatory compliant, so our customers are using this not only for molecular diagnostics and companion diagnostics but also for manufacturing quality control and manufacturing automation. Unlike traditional LIMS vendors L7|ESP supports complete automation of the scientific workflow from sample/order receipt and accessioning to clinical report generation (or Certificate of Analysis in the case of QC labs). Being a single unified platform also reduces validation costs in regulatory environments. We have customers both in the precision diagnostics space (CAP/CLIA, LDT, cDX) and also in the cell and gene therapy manufacturing space using this for doing quality control and manufacturing execution.