Meeting the Need for Speed

Enter MSC-LIMS. O’Rielly quickly discovered that MSC-LIMS unique Excel interface could also be used to integrate their LIMS with their BAX.

MSC’s Founder, Rick Collard, has spent a decade integrating lab instruments, field instruments and existing report formats with the LIMS. Excel has proved to be incredibly useful as “middleware” between lab or field instruments and MSC-LIMS. We have used it successfully to import data into the LIMS from hand-held PCs, balances, and other lab instruments such as 3M’s Petrifilm Plate Reader. The process here was essentially the same,” he says.

Rohrbeck commends the middleware concept. “It is not a coincidence that BAX system files work well with Microsoft Excel,” he notes. “Using Excel as a middleware tool provides many advantages. It aids our development, customer service, and end users by giving us ready access to data files without writing specialized tools.”

Collard designed two Excel templates to serve as middleware between the BAX and the LIMS. Visual basic for applications (VBA) code in the appropriate worksheet executes tasks in the correct order. The first template instructs Excel to receive sample data sent from the LIMS, and then to send the data along to the BAX system. The second template instructs Excel to fetch test result data from the BAX system and then to make it available upon request by the LIMS.

O’Reilly configured her LIMS to recognize specified analytes (such as salmonella, genus Listeria, E coli., etc.) as BAX “targets.” The LIMS was then configured to accept specified values for results, so that validation occurs automatically when results are imported into the LIMS.

Exporting LIMS Samples into the BAX

With Excel in place behind the scene, the process is straightforward: Technicians log samples into the LIMS as usual. When gearing up for a BAX test run, technicians use the LIMS’ query tools to select the samples slated for testing, and then view the sample(s) data in a specified report format. Once the sample selection is verified, they use the LIMS’ [Export to MS Excel Template] button; in the ensuing Excel data transfer screen they select the custom “BAX Rack Setup” Excel template from a pick list and click [OK] to export the report’s data to the template.

After the samples’ IDs, descriptions and target data are imported to the template, the user selects a predefined well populating pattern from the pick list in the BAX system setup. According to the populating pattern chosen, each sample’s information is automatically placed into one of the workbook’s 96 cells, which graphically represent the test rack’s 96 sample wells in an 8×12 “table. “

Now, each LIMS sample occupies the on-screen equivalent of its electronic representation on the BAX system monitor screen and the sample well’s physical location in the BAX rack.

Visual verification is simple. Users click to create the BAX “pre-run” file, then click save. Then, they use the BAX system’s own software to load the pre-run file into the BAX system, and run the test as usual.

“Tweaking” is intuitive. For example, technicians may place sample information into any of the well locations on the Excel export spreadsheet. Or, if only half of the BAX rack’s 96 sample wells will be used in a given test run, technicians may select the pre-defined well populating pattern that targets alternate columns. The sample data then automatically populates alternate columns in the spreadsheet, and thus in the BAX system as well.

An essential revision was requested by O’Rielly. “After implementation we found that it would be helpful to have each different analyte in a different BAX column, and MSC added a “start targets in new column” check box, and it works perfectly,” she says. The potential for cross-contamination is reduced.

Importing BAX Test Results into the LIMS

The BAX system independently records the results of its test run. To copy the test results into the LIMS, technicians activate the second customized Excel template. Using its controls they locate and select the BAX file to import, then with one click the samples and test results are automatically imported to the template.