Inkosi 'The Chief' is the next major public release of the professionally supported open source Lims by Bika Lab Systems and was released 26 May 2008, free to download, install and use
Popular first release of Bika - pronounced 'bheeka' and meaning 'to report' in isiZulu - has been downloaded more than 12,500 times world wide and established Bika as the leading open source Lims.
Feature rich Lims 2 promises to become true Inkosi to the global Bika community of users and developers.
It is now in production locally and being piloted in Canada, Nigeria and Costa Rica.
Also in May, Bika hosted a fellow from CICA with the aim of further customisation and implementations in pesticide residue laboratories in Latin America.
The scientific exchange was sponsored by the IAEA.
A Spanish translation is nearing completion.
Bika Inkosi offers a host of functional enhancements, a well developed quality control suite and more automation to further improve turnaround times and eliminate human error.
Regularly requested analysis sets, analysis profiles, can now be ordered with the minimum of clicks and in bulk through import files.
In the lab itself, once-off worksheet template creation circumvents laborious manual work sheet management.
The templates include place holders for control and duplicate samples and can be configured to closely resemble instrument trays.
Upon using a template, Inkosi populates worksheets with analyses closest to their due dates but these can be manually adjusted to requirement, before exporting them to instruments and recovering results without having to manually enter any data.
Results proceed through the standard Bika web based workflow - validated against client and product specific specifications, verification and publication in the client's preferred media: email, fax, digitally signed print, SMS and export file.
The process is assisted by a system of alerts, prompting role players of pending tasks.
A true time calendar, taking non working hours into account, makes for accurate alerts and efficiency reports.
Results remain securely archived on-line, accessible via a powerful Google-like live search engine.
The Bika Calendar was developed and released as standalone product for adoption and further enhancement in other open source projects.
