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SCIMCON - A unique business proposition

"Congratulations, you are the project manager for our new LIMS."

Back in 1987, my then Managing Director gave me this enlightening news and I have heard similar phrases many times since. For some individuals, managing a LIMS implementation has been a worthwhile career move, but regardless of the ultimate success of the project, all too often it is a stressful experience and it is easy to see why. Typically a laboratory supervisor with little or no laboratory information management system (LIMS) experience is charged with the success of a system that will affect the daily practices of everyone in the laboratory, possibly need to communicate with other corporate information systems (IS) and ultimately produce useful information from the wealth of data that a modern laboratory generates. Frequently, a LIMS will be the single largest investment made by a laboratory; project managers can ill afford to get the decision wrong, but until recently, anyone looking for support with this undertaking faced a dilemma. In the UK alone, there are over 20 LIMS vendors and a similar number of consultancies that can offer expert scientific information management advice to science-based companies - to laboratories.

Here at Scimcon we are familiar with the predicament of choosing between consultants for their Information technology (IT) skills, IS proficiency or validation expertise. Scimcon is the world's largest sports testing laboratory and provides contract analysis services, method development and metabolism studies for biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. We have been involved in the design and development of LIMS since 1987 and today we develop and support our own 50-user system in the highly regulated environment that is a consequence of our UKAS accreditation (ISO-17025) and GLP compliance. In addition, one outcome of our diversification into pharmaceutical contract analysis has been "FDA-vendor" audits of our procedures.

Against this background of analytical expertise, we have launched SCIMCON, a new Scientific Information Management Consultancy. SCIMCON is a unique business proposition because we offer our services from within the regulated laboratory environment, thus combining expertise in IT and in science. SCIMCON will build on the success of the existing Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) business unit. Formed in 1998 the unit has spent 24 months appraising the market and we feel that the existing customer base demonstrates its success in diverse environments. Current clients include:

AstraZeneca
Novartis
Dow AgroSciences
Brewing Research International
Unilever

By drawing on our practical experience of developing and managing a LIMS on a day-to-day basis, we aim to address the shortcomings of the existing consultancies and offer a new distinctive laboratory-based perspective. Focusing on this unique position in the sector, we have designed our current portfolio of services to draw on the strengths of the laboratory. To this end, regardless of the service, we openly invite clients to visit our laboratories. We structure project consultancy around our proven methods and training courses can be "hands-on" in our laboratories. In addition, we are able to call on the resources of Scimcon, so clients will have the opportunity to talk to the analysts in the laboratory and to the people who have actually validated live systems, thus enhancing validation and/or change control consultancy.

Services currently offered include:

System pre-selection Consultancy
Project Consultancy
Validation Consultancy
Training
Change Control Management
GxP Health Checks

Initially, we will supply the consultancy services through a four-strong team who have a total of 60 years combined laboratory and information systems experience. These consultants have "grown-up" in the laboratory - they understand the needs of users from their own experiences. Maybe it is indicative of their background and openness that they have been heard to say to clients:

"It is not by choice that we are experts in validating electronic information systems."

Importantly, we are not talking about lab managers who have simply migrated to the IT industry. These people are still involved in the laboratory on a day-to-day basis. Moreover, they have personal knowledge of the needs of a laboratory user and understand the challenge of balancing the requirements of the laboratory against the requirements of the business. Perhaps the easiest way to appreciate how different we are, is to ask yourself how many other consultants can pass on their experiences of defending procedures or a validation plan to an external auditor during a recent GLP or UKAS audit?

Technical knowledge is essential, an understanding of the many procedural guidelines is invaluable, and we have both. However, in our opinion, it is the people who make a successful system. We should not measure success at implementation but rather as a continued process. Consequently, in order to satisfy the business and laboratory needs of Scimcon, each of our consultants has internal responsibilities. Current projects include the extension of LIMS into additional R&D sections and the fortification of links between LIMS and our accounts systems. In effect, we can measure our success, because:

We practise what we preach, it is what we do every day

Is there one drawback to this new venture? Well, Scimcon's regulatory compliance section has subjected my team to three internal audits in as many weeks!

I have to ask, are they putting us to the test?

About the author

Trevor De Silva is Chief Executive Officer of Scimcon. A graduate chemist, Trevor has been working in forensic science since 1980 and with LIMS and laboratory automation since 1987. He successfully completed a second degree in computing science in 1990, and since then has been involved in Information Technology, successfully implementing and validating two LIMS for HFL in the UK (www.hfl.co.uk). As the senior consultant with Scimcon, he has consulted on numerous projects worldwide and written several articles on information systems and laboratory automation.


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