Overview Contract Analytical Laboratory "Precision Analysis (NW) Ltd" needed a system to efficiently communicate with its growing customer base. The LabCom System supplied by Village Software allowed customers and laboratory staff to work in the familiar Windows Forms environment while securely updating a centralized database.
Laboratory Management Systems
LabCom is a LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System), one of a class of products that assist in the efficient running of laboratories. LabCom helps communication and administration as part of the laboratory process, without constraining the scientific processes. It can be considered as a LIMS Lite product, which aims to assist staff without creating a dependency.
It focuses on
- Sample recording
- Result entry
- Result reporting
Return on Investment
In the competitive field of analytical laboratory testing, Precision needs to both operate efficiently and add value for its clients. On some occasions, it is a requirement of the contract to offer such a system.
Offering an online Windows based system allows clients to gain control of their data as if they had their own lab on site. Among other features, it allows them to report against a range of criteria. This adds to Precision Analysis's selling points and helps it compete in the market place.
Company Background
Precision Analysis (NW) Ltd is a flexible and expanding contract analytical laboratory. It provides chemical, microbiological and asbestos testing services for customers in the UK and Ireland.
Among others, it serves the food, water and building industry. A typical Food sector client will send batches of product and swabs taken around the factory to Precision Analysis. They will test these samples for both undesirable elements and to confirm content.
Clients with a large throughput of samples to Precision themselves need to improve their efficiency of operation. In a cost competitive market Precision needs to both increase its customer service as a differentiator, and to reduce its non value-added costs such as administration. 
Solution
Before developing the broadband-based Windows client, Village reviewed a number of other approaches. It was clear that a number of similar systems relied on email transfers of data, but these systems seemed expensive and unstable. Similarly the possibility of a purely Web Browser based option was examined but it was felt that this would only be appropriate for occasional users and not everyday users.
The principal technical problem of the development was ensuring that the system operated in such a way that the user was unaware that it was communicating with an offsite database.
The resultant application allows both Precision's lab and their customers to operate the system without being dependent on an onsite server.
Technology
In order to optimize the speed of the system all business logic is contained in the Windows application that resides on each users PC.
A design strategy called "Lazy Initialisation" is used to cache the appropriate data on the client's machine and reduce the amount of communication back to the server.
This technology approach although still comparatively rare is being championed by Microsoft under the 'Smart Client' banner. This has become possible for communicating with SME customers since the arrival of broadband ADSL.
Strong segregation of different customers' data is provided by using an powerful Relational Database Management System, in this case SQL Server, hosted by an Internet service provider.
General Conclusions
By taking advantage of modern technologies and modern development methods, it has been possible to produce a sophisticated distributed solution for maintaining common sets of data. Placing the solution on the Internet allowed Broadband communication between the laboratory and the clients.
The LabCom solution is available on a per use basis maintained by Village Software.
A similar development of a Smart Client system might cost between £8,000 and £50,000.
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Mar 2010
