Professional Open Source at Work

To see a good example of how the Professional Open Source business model works, you should have a look at our User List, Bika-Users (register - view archives).

Take the post with subject 'File Attachments', which was initiated by Dr. Michael Kirchner (Institute of Inorganic Chemistry from the University of Duisberg-Essen, Germany) on May the 11th, with the question:

"The most important feature is to be able to attach files (raw data, crystal information files, images) as the results of a measurement. Is this possible with bika?"

This was recognised by Bika LIMS user Chris Bolton (CEO of Benchmark Laboratories Group, Canada), who replied:

"...in our case a number of our clients are now requesting that we
attach copies of our chromatograph reports (images of chemical
signatures) produced from our gas chromatographs (GC's)"

The discussion kicked off which led to a distilled specification over three months of various inputs. The final spec, which was project managed by Lemoene Smit, was as follows:

Set-up
---------

To maintain flexibility and redundancy, attachments are allowed on both
AR and Analysis level and this is configured in the LIMS setup:

Global flag in 'Laboratory information' to indicate attachments per
AR yes/no

A similar flag per 'Analysis Service' to indicate attachments per
Analysis yes/no

In both cases:

Compulsory Y?N


Set-up table of Attachment types

Title

Description


Set-up per Client Contact
-----------------------------------

For the user to decide whether to include attachments with emailed
results or links only (default)

Radio button on the contact's publication preferences


At run time, on each AR or Analysis as configured earlier, Upload
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Manage results tab

Functionality to multi load attachments from the file system via
standard *nix/Mac/Windows file browsing

Add Keywords

For ARs only

Remarks field – drop down to select Attachment title and description

It'll be quite difficult to fit all of these in per analysis

NB. Workflow dependency: ARs/Analyses without compulsory attachments
cannot proceed to to_be_verified


View and download attachment
------------------------------------------

None of the attachments will be shown in views or results emails
directly, but hyper linked only to where they are kept inside the database

File sizes are displayed to warn users of the size of the download

Clicking the link will open the attachment using the user's standard
browser preferences

AR attachments only: For display / email / print functionality these
files listed at the top of the AR window


Printed reports
--------------------
Each attachment referenced by

Title

File name

URL

Upload date


Search and Queries
----------------------------

Users finds Attachments using

file name

title

file type

Chris then sponsored this development, which was managed by Anneline Sweetnam, development manager of Bika Lab Systems, on the main trunk of Bika LIMS.

This development has been finalised and is now available on a test instance to be evaluated and signed off. If you're interested send me an email, and I'll supply you with access details

This and several other developments will be released in a major upgrade of Bika LIMS 2.2 in the next quarter.

Did you miss the announcement of the small Bika LIMS 2.1.1 release and the upgrade demo?

Here is the news item that carried the announcement, and here the list of changes in 2.1.1.
You can request a demo by sending an email to demorequest@bikalabs.com and mention that you would like to try Bika LIMS.

Release Time for Bika LIMS 2.1 & Bika Calendar 1.0

Yes, we're finally there. It's release time.

We have released two new products early this week;
Bika LIMS 2.1 'Inkosi'; the latest and much improved version of our generic Laboratory Information Management System solution.
Bika Calendar 1.0; A stand-alone Plone product, that we use as an add-on to Bika LIMS to create a true working hours calendar.

Here links to Downloads and Project Pages;

• Bika LIMS Project Page
  
• Bika LIMS 2.1 Project Page & Download links
• Bika LIMS 2.2 Project Page - the next phase
• Bika Calendar Project Page & Download links
• Download page on Sourceforge.net (LIMS & Calendar)

You might also see us appear in various on-line media, as on the following project websites; Plone.org (LIMS, Calendar), Freshmeat.net (LIMS) and Sourceforge.net and of course on Bikalabs.com

Here also the official Press Release (which will be released early next week):

Web-based laboratory information management · Bika LIMS 2.1 Inkosi open source release
Bika LIMS 2.1 Inkosi 'The Chief' is the next major public release of the professionally supported open source LIMS by Cape Town company Bika Lab Systems and was released 26 May 2008 on a general public license, 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 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

Automation
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

Quality Control
Bika LIMS 1 is successfully used in ISO 17025 accredited labs and Inkosi builds on this heritage with granular audit trails of samples, analyses, analysis requests, worksheets, orders, invoices, and web content edits, ensuring total traceability. Analysis and work sheet re-testing work flows are incorporated and logged
Quality Control measures include the maintenance of standards, stocks and suppliers, the use of blanks and duplicate samples, instrument calibrations and graphical reporting on trends, distribution curves, relative % error and inter-laboratory proficiency schemes

CMS - Web portal content management
Bika remains one of the few web based LIMS not held back by web enabled legacy design, but developed in the cutting edge and robust web server technologies the Internet originated on. Inkosi LIMS front end can be built up to provide valuable services to clients and staff as well as marketing material to prospects and anonymous visitors
Knowledge centres and news letter tools are just two products that easily integrate with the LIMS and literally hundreds more exist, developed in the community supporting Plone, the open source CMS Inkosi is built on

POS - the professional open source model adopted by Bika
There is much media coverage about open source software models but these are often misunderstood and its potential underestimated. POS combines traditional OSS projects run by a community of software enthusiasts with a professional company, Bika Lab Systems in the case of Inkosi. The community adds strong support and world wide adoption of the software, while Bika Lab Systems backs the project with full-time engineering staff and formal contracts sponsored by fee-paying customers
Customers benefit from the increased quality of the software and design, and increased traction enabled by the product's community. Customers, partners, engineers, and open source communities are all self-motivated in ways that are beneficial to themselves and, as a side effect, to all

Future plans
Bika LIMS development is driven by client and community requirements, and if feedback from the current round of pilot projects bears fruit, complete instrument maintenance, batching, sample storage management and change request modules will be developed for release 4th quarter 2008. These will once more be best of breed designs discussed and improved in the Bika community forums. Ubuntu!

For more information please visit www.bikalabs.com. All enquiries welcome, info@bikalabs.com