The Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) has implemented the Thermo Scientific Nautilus laboratory information management system (LIMS) for use in its laboratory near York, UK.
The LIMS is used to manage an archive of more than 50,000 samples, improving efficiencies and productivity across Fera's laboratory.
As food safety becomes even more of a legislative concern in the US and Europe, Thermo Fisher Scientific provides products and consulting services to meet the needs of international regulatory authorities and to protect the safety of consumers around the world.
Fera, a UK-based government organisation, is an executive agency of Defra and provides evidence, analysis and professional advice, underpinned by research to the government, international organisations and the private sector.
The organisation was created in April 2009 by merging the Central Science Laboratory (CSL), Defra's Plant Health Division, Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate, the Plant Variety Rights Office and Seeds Division and the Government Decontamination Service.
Its purpose is to support and develop a sustainable and secure food chain, a healthy natural environment and protect the global community from biological and chemical risks.
Fera is the National Reference Laboratory (NRL) for the UK and Malta for chemicals in food, pesticides, veterinary drugs, dioxins and polychlorinated biophenyls (PCBs).
NRL status means that Fera is officially responsible for setting up European Union-wide standards for routine procedures and reliable testing methods.
The organisation manages more than 600 research projects, analysing more than 50,000 plant and food samples a year.
To establish credibility for its international work, the organisation requires robust processes and it decided that a single LIMS could support this objective instead of a number of smaller bespoke systems or manual processes.
The LIMS would enable Fera to manage all samples on site within a single repository and harmonise its worksheets across its laboratories.
It recorded its analytical trend data manually, so it needed a LIMS system that could automate this information in an acceptable format to support internal investigation and reporting functions.
Fera selected Thermo Scientific Nautilus LIMS for its ability to be configured and managed in house.
It also offers the company a flexible user interface that is intended to make it easy for laboratory personnel to configure the LIMS to suit individual workflows across the laboratory.
Since the implementation of the system, Nautilus LIMS has improved operational efficiency by enabling data to be entered one time only and shared among all departments.
The LIMS has improved the security of data entry and has assisted sample identification and tracking.
Using Nautilus, parts of the laboratory are now 95 per cent paperless and the system reduces laboratory time by 25-30 per cent as there is no manual recording of data and transcription errors are eliminated.
Paul Burrell, LIMS manager at Fera, said: 'We use Nautilus LIMS strategically on projects, eliminating paper reports, working electronically and involving customers in the project by giving them access to their results in real time.' Nautilus LIMS provides the organisation with a complete sample recording, management, retrieval and reporting system, improving productivity and efficiency.
Prior to the implementation of LIMS, plate-well values had to be recorded manually, which took more than an hour.
With Nautilus, this step can be completed within 10 minutes.
Fera's Food Analytical Service has also substantially improved laboratory efficiency.
The LIMS supports both Fera's public-sector and commercial projects, helping it to generate revenues.
The organisation selected Nautilus because it is scalable and flexible, letting it grow with the business and enabling it to be more competitive.
