Thermo Fisher Scientific has launched a laboratory information management system (LIMS) designed to support clinical laboratories serving the fields of translational and personalised medicine.
The Thermo Scientific Clinical LIMS is a fully functional data and sample management system that is said to improve the management of laboratory workflow and to drive a clinical laboratory's processes while enabling bidirectional communication between physicians and the laboratory.
The system delivers the end-to-end laboratory data and patient data management functionality needed by scientists and technicians involved in clinical and molecular diagnostics and related research.
The new Clinical LIMS is the latest addition to Thermo Fisher Scientific's portfolio of products that support laboratories in their efforts to deliver advanced testing capabilities to hospitals and clinicians and enables an end-to-end solution that supports laboratories from sample preparation to final patient results.
By bringing together the sample-centric core functionality of a LIMS with the patient-centric-compliant functionality of a traditional laboratory information system (LIS), the Clinical LIMS supports the delivery of a streamlined and automated information flow following the patient from point-of-care to molecular testing and results analysis, diagnosis and treatment, according to the company.
The Thermo Scientific Clinical LIMS provides healthcare professionals with easier accessibility to test data originating in the clinical diagnostics testing laboratory.
The Clinical LIMS facilitates compliance with all industry regulations related to patient privacy, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and those related to clinical testing such as Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA).
In addition, it supports the most widely used ANSI-accredited standard for the interoperability of health information technology (Health Level 7 Messaging - HL7) and is designed to enable laboratories to operate in compliance with applicable regulatory requirements.
The Clinical LIMS is being used by Foundation Medicine, a cancer diagnostics company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that aims to bring comprehensive cancer genome analysis to routine care.
Foundation Medicine is using next-generation sequencing as a platform for its cancer diagnostic test.
Test results will be reported within the context of publicly available scientific and medical literature and clinical trials to provide a decision-making tool to help guide therapeutic decision making.
Michael Pellini, managing director, president and chief executive officer of Foundation Medicine, said: 'Foundation Medicine's test captures relevant, actionable genomic information from the small amount of tumour tissue present in routine cancer specimens with one comprehensive test.
'This information will enable treating physicians to specifically target the molecular subtype of each patient's cancer.
'The information technology necessary to do this must be able to manage and enable a convergence of lab sample tracking data, protected personal information and a custom high-performance analysis pipeline specific to our product offering.
'We selected Thermo Fisher's new LIS solution because we are confident it will meet this challenge,' he added.
Dave Champagne, vice-president and general manager for Informatics at Thermo Fisher Scientific, said: 'The Thermo Scientific Clinical LIMS fills a critical need in the field of personalised medicine that supports the rapid delivery of results from the lab directly to the patient's bedside.
'This highly configurable system can be customised to accommodate a wide variety of laboratory workflow models,' he added.
