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Pittcon 2009 Wrap-Up

Despite being overshadowed by the economic downturn, Pittcon rolls out significant new product releases and technology advances

The premier conference and exposition on laboratory equipment and chemical analyses in North America, the Pittsburgh Conference (Pittcon) was held this year at the McCormick Convention Center in Chicago. IL from March 8-13. Once again, there were a number of LIMS and Informatics sessions, short courses, workshops, and tutorials available to feature the latest in LIMS, Informatics, laboratory automation, and data management.

Continuing the tradition of past events – and because Pittcon is one of the first major North American events of the year -- most LIMS and Informatics vendors use Pittcon to launch new solutions.

This year, more than 1,000 exhibitors showcased their products and services on the Pittcon exhibition floor, with almost 40 Informatics vendors showcasing their solutions in the Informatics arena.

At a Glance: Pittcon 2009 LIMS and Informatics Sessions
• Data Analysis (Mon poster session)
• Managing a Laboratory in Quality, Training and Technology While Leading the People (Tuesday am workshop)
• Laboratory Informatics (Tuesday poster session)
• Laboratory Management (Tuesday poster session)
• Laboratory Management (Tuesday pm oral session)
• Data Management/Lab Management (Wednesday am new product forum)
• Case Studies in Improving Laboratories (Wednesday pm invited Symposia)
• Lab Informatics: From Planning to Operation (Thursday am oral session)
• Chemometrics (Thursday am oral session) • Data Analysis & Manipulation (Thursday pm oral session)
• Bioinformatics of Proteomics (Thursday pm invited symposia)
• Lab Informatics: Operation and Validation (Thursday pm oral session - half session)

The Affect of the Economy

As the first Pittcon to occur after the collapse of the global economic marketplace, most of the press conferences addressed how well the particular company was surviving the downturn and where revenues were expected to appear in the near future. Not surprisingly, a lot of purchasing is expected to come from the academic and government markets that are anticipated to be the greatest recipients of the stimulus package.

Dr. Rohit Khanna, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Waters Division, also expects the pharmaceutical and food safety markets to be growth areas in 2009, with process improvements being critical to the sale. “Customers are looking for investments that help them improve and refine their processes, if not change those processes entirely,” he stated during Waters’ press conference.

Throughout the conference, it was evident that vendors were placing a much greater emphasis on customer needs, particularly on easy-to-use, web-based solutions that require minimal training and a more enjoyable user experience. Thermo Scientific, for instance, is focusing on customer productivity and innovations such as reduced solvent usage and application-based workflows. In addition, Dusty Turning, President of PerkinElmer’s One Source Lab Services, stated “customers are driving operational improvements, including outsourcing business functions and cost control reductions.”

Workflow was a term that almost every vendor repeated over and over again, particularly workflows that increased productivity and lowered operating costs. The increasing cost pressures in the lab that were already creating a difficult operating environment increased with the drop in the economy. And, the market is expected to continue softening.

Interestingly, despite the economy, it is full steam ahead for a number of vendors, including PerkinElmer who introduced 15 new products in the first quarter of 2009, their largest number ever in a single quarter, and for Bruker, who also introduced their highest number of solutions ever at a Pittcon conference, including some that were in entirely new markets for the company.

The time between purchasing and final installation is proving to be a critical element as companies need to ensure that the solutions they buy will work and work quickly. Cost is, of course, an issue, but fast return on investment must be part of the cost equation and a rapid payoff for the capital expense is now a necessity. Proven, reliable, compelling solutions will be the ones that survive the storm.

New LIMS

Several vendors launched new and enhanced versions of their LIMS.

Perhaps most interesting was the big rollout by PerkinElmer, who took last Pittcon's announcement of a new LABWORKS greenLIMS, a pre-configured LIMS specifically for the biofuels industry, and expanded upon the concept in a big way with the release of a number of new versions, crowned by the introduction of LABWORKS LIMS version 6.1 that delivers a LIMS with a zero footprint Web client. Version 6.1 can be deployed with minimal user training and is designed to consistently perform on a wide variety of Web browsers. Now, in addition to greenLIMS and with the new foodLIMS, waterLIMS and processLIMS packages, LABWORKS 6.1 LIMS supports the unique needs of a diverse range of laboratories, from pre-login sample organization through reporting and data distribution. A workflow that can be configurable allows laboratories to focus on only those process steps that are relevant to a sample lifecycle, allowing greater control over resources without changing the way the laboratory operates.

LabWare has also zeroed in on flexible application solutions, and announced three additional Template Solutions to their LIMS suite. This brings to seven the number of industry-specific Template Solutions that now include Forensics, Public Health, and Biorepository domains as well as previously available Pharmaceuticals, Environmental, Chemical/Petrochemical Process, and Contract Labs. Template Solutions are pre-configured LIMS that feature a comprehensive collection of industry or domain-specific features and workflows.

The emphasis on ease of use and ease of installation continued with Applied Biosystems release of a new SQL*LIMS P4 Plug & Play Pharma Package, a pre-configured and pre-validated solution for pharmaceutical QA/QC that allows a validated go-live in less than three months. A new intuitive, user-friendly graphical dashboard eliminates significant end-user training. SQL*LIMS P4 can help Biotech and Pharmaceutical manufacturing organizations save money and address regulatory requirements in a fraction of the time by deploying a functional, fully configured, fully validated LIMS solution.

Finally, Accelerated Technology Laboratories (ATL) announced ATL Bulldog, a next generation laboratory informatics platform that is built on the latest Microsoft.NET technologies. ATL Bulldog LIMS -- which will be released in the second half of 2009 -- will provide a wealth of features and wizards that will walk users through common LIMS tasks.

New ELNs

STARLIMS Corporation created a lot of buzz with the introduction of their new STARLIMS Electronic Notebook that enables labs to record data in electronic format from the first moment it is created. The STARLIMS Electronic Notebook maps each of the steps defined in a SOP to an electronic worksheet— which ensures that all the required information is recorded, validated and carried out in strict compliance with the prescribed method. The result is a complete electronic record detailing each step in the analytical procedure, together with all the required supporting information (e.g., the materials, personnel, instruments and calculations employed in the process).

Throughout the conference, Applied Biosystems demonstrated their new SQL*LIMS eNotebook solution that addresses lab tasks from sample input to reporting, immediately increasing the lab’s productivity by eliminating paper-based forms, controlling SOP requirements, automating analyses, and storing results in a searchable database. A portable, web-based solution that replaces paper-based procedural documentation in QA/QC laboratories, SQL*LIMS eNotebook delivers a consistent platform that utilizes the same passwords, eSignatures, auditing and versioning for all the lab’s notebooks and computers (Figure 1).

Figure 1. SQL*LIMS eNotebook leverages a web client to automate data review and approval, scheduling and workload monitoring, reducing the amount of time analysts spend processing samples, thus giving them additional time to run more samples.





Other New Informatics Solutions

There were, of course, numerous other announcements, introductions and product launches, the most notable of which follow.

Connects, a new program aimed at bridging the gap between laboratory-generated data and the enterprise level information that is required for mission critical management decisions, was launched by Thermo Electron Corporation. Thermo Scientific Connects is a set of offerings that leverage the company's breadth of LIMS and CDS capabilities, as well as expertise in enterprise systems integration to help streamline and improve the transfer of knowledge between laboratory-generated data and enterprise-level information systems.

Applied Biosystems announced their new SQL*LIMS Innovation Center/Exchange (ICE), a repository of functional extensions and automation enhancements, created from and for the collaboration and sharing of their collective intelligence among their customers. SQL*LIMS ICE is similar in concept to open source community services but specific to the SQL*LIMS community of professionals. Now users can download clever expansions created by other SQL*LIMS professionals, contribute innovations to the repository, and gain valuable insight and knowledge from other professionals in the industry.

Bio-Rad Laboratories Informatics Division released Version 8.0 of its KnowItAll Informatics System. The new Version 8.0 release offers several new software tools, including Spectral Mixture Analysis; ATR Spectra Handling; Area Under the Curve Calculation for IR Analysis; and, Extinction Coefficient. The KnowItAll Informatics System is a fully integrated software and database package that provides scientific researchers multiple tools including database building, management, search, analysis, prediction, structure drawing, and reporting all within a single user interface.

Dionex introduced a new Chromeleon 7 Chromatography Data System, a next-generation CDS that provides a fast, easy path from samples to results. The software combines intelligent functionality with a new design based on Operational Simplicity principles. Central to this new design is eWorkflows, a new automation framework that simplifies any chromatography process to a few easy steps and accommodates operators of different skill levels by offering basic and advanced options.

WITec introduced WITec Project Plus, a software package for advanced data evaluation and chemometric image processing that features various tools for multivariate data analysis in the fields of Confocal Raman Imaging and Scanning Probe Microscopy such as cluster analysis and principal component analysis.

Sessions and Presentations

The Laboratory Informatics sessions have been mostly pushed to the latter half of the conference, and were once again very uneven. Unfortunately, the majority of vendor-provided presentations were usually sales pitches that provided one-sided information tailored to their product’s strengths. Not all, but most. On the other hand, most of the consultant presentations were well-rounded and informative, giving a good idea of what that consultant would be like to work with and the direction he or she would provide.

The user-provided presentations were often the most interesting and usually the most well attended. For instance, the Laboratory Management session organized by ALMA on Tuesday morning was particularly interesting, and the presentations were informative and entertaining. AkzoNobel’s Michael Neag addressed performance, quality and training in the lab during his presentation, and emphasized that attitude affects performance. He provided motivational insights into how lab managers can improve staff satisfaction at work and hence enable both staff and lab to perform better.

Later in the same session, Kurt Headrick, Chief Chemist, Lab Operations for Vale Inc, the second largest mining company in the work, provided insights into working at Vale’s lab in remote Labrador, Canada where “the challenges of the job are not technical, but political.” Because the site is located on Native Indian lands, he told of spending seven years negotiating agreements with the local tribes to build the site. There are ongoing challenges because of strict EH&S issues that range from the need for a full-time on-site environmental monitoring specialist to strict prohibitions that protect local fauna and wildlife. For instance, if an employee picks a wild blueberry, that person will be fired on the spot. “It’s the adventure travel of lab management,” Headrick stated. The site shuts down for more than half the year due to weather, and staff have returned to discover that the local black bears have broken in to various buildings during the harsh winter months, “but so far, we’ve not had any black bears in the lab … yet.” During the Q&A period after his presentation, other scientists pointed out that political issues surrounding a lab can take many forms, including having a long-time site that used to be remote find itself in the midst of suburbia and hence neighbors with concerns about laboratory chemicals. One scientist stated that their site scents the laboratory emissions with a vanilla fragrance because locals complained of the smell! Another scientist, while glad not to have to encounter bears, stated that they are near an endangered frog population and must prove that their lab does not affect that population.

During the Thursday morning Laboratory Informatics sessions, the presentations were too much like sales pitches, particularly when back-to-back presentations were given by different people from the same company. In fact, putting the Informatics sessions at the tail end of the conference makes little sense. Why have presentations that focus on how to buy and evaluate a product at the end of the show, a few hours before the expo floor closes, when the point of the expo floor is to provide a forum for users to examine products they are planning to purchase?

Some of the information presented was downright misleading. For instance, one session that was pitched to first time LIMS buyers focused on basic educational issues such as database platforms and the needs evaluation, but placed a number of common LIMS attributes in the "nice to have" but not necessary category; attributes such as report automation, workload management, mobile capability... If this is the case then the LIMS being pitched in somewhat limited and adroitly avoids presenting a true picture of what a typical LIMS provides. This presentation was immediately followed by one that focused on portable web technology that enable the LIMS to be available anywhere, anytime… which is of course the direction that the LIMS marketplace has been moving for more than 20 years. To say that mobile capability is not necessary is to dismiss the realities of what’s happening in today’s lab.

But there is definitely wheat along with the chaff.

During his presentation, consultant Robert Neihardt’s stated that the “the RFP process is failing because RFPs tend to be assembled when we have the least amount of information and while the build can meet any requirement, the costs aren’t known yet and commitments are sometimes vague.” He states that it’s vitally important to look closely at vendor proposals.

In summary, Perkin Elmer’s Mike Lehtola gave a very interesting case study concerning a recent LIMS implementation by the Florida Department of Agriculture (look for it in an upcoming LIMS/letter article), and one of the few case studies provided during Pittcon. He showed how the Florida Department of Agriculture built a web-based regulatory and compliance management system around their LIMS, taking an old and fragmented system and making it new and unified.

Next year, the conference will be back at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL from February 28 to March 5, 2010. For details, visit http://www.pittcon.org.