South Africa needs a different approach

I recently stumbled (actually it was more like a virtual stumble) upon an article on managing modern laboratories by Joe Liscouski of Scientific Computing. The article contains a wealth of information on laboratory information management systems (LIMS). The focus is on the integration of existing LIMS software with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.
The integration of a LIMS with an ERP system seems an obvious evolution to any developer. What really intrigues me is how the entire article is based on the assumption that all laboratories use LIMS software:

"Managing laboratories in this age of informatics encompass not only science and scientists, but also systems that assist people in doing their work — work that has expanded to support the legal and regulatory requirements of modern research, development and testing."

Internationally this may be the case, but many South African laboratories still rely on the good ol' paper trail to get the job done. I've always been curious about this. I wonder how much longer it takes to get a sample and a report back to clients in a laboratory where everything has to be done manually?

We recently installed Lab-i at the Food and Drugs Assurance (FDA) laboratory in Pretoria. The system was fully customised to adapt to FDA's unique environment and to ensure as little disruption to the business process as possible. The laboratory's existing financial software was kept in place and Lab-i was built around it.

Of course it would make sense for a laboratory that's responsible for the safety of products that end up on our dinner plates to have a software system that automates time-consuming processes. The system frees up staff to focus on tests instead of paperwork. What bothers me is that FDA is one laboratory out of hundreds that realises that automation is important.

We are in the process of pitching a Lab-i to a local branch of a major international pharmaceutical company. I find it astonishing that a company with five laboratories across South Africa is still without a LIMS.

What I'm getting at is: LIMS articles and information available on the Internet is an extremely useful tool for vendors to understand the potential of the systems, but to the South African consumer it is virtually worthless.

In South Africa the key to reaching laboratories lies in education on basic technology. There is such an untapped market for LIMS systems, but this market will remain largely untapped until South African software developers start communicating the value or automation. Only once laboratories start to realise the value of the basic automation processes can more advanced integrations be considered.