It is well to be noted that the Laboratory Information Management System- LIMS spectrum in 2024 happens to be a dynamic one, pushed by accelerating advancements when it comes to technology as well as evolving industry needs. The 2024 trends report goes on to dig deep into the major drivers that go on to propel market growth and the fact that LIMS solutions happen to be adapting to meet the demands of an increasingly competitive as well as data-driven scientific environment.
As one looks ahead to 2024, there are four trends one may as well expect to see for LIMS. These include increased integration with the instruments as well as other software systems; navigating market share issues, a requirement for digital transformation such as the growing adaption in case of advanced analytics, AI as well as machine learning- ML capabilities; and also leveraging LES- Laboratory Execution System along with the ELN Electronic Laboratory Notebook. For starters, let us look into the first two trends.
LIMS Trends in 2024
Trend 1: A Rising LIMS Integration
LIMS integrations in the past have gone on to include varying degrees of inventory or testing data transferred between an organization’s ERP- Enterprise Resource Planning as well as their LIMS, or a basic integration of the results that are passed from instruments to LIMS. The Lab of the Future happens to have far more demanding integration as well as automation needs, which goes on to increase laboratory throughput as well as efficiency, decrease technician errors, help with large-scale analytics and even AI, and also drive down costs. While there is indeed a tremendous amount of benefit that can be gained with this kind of level of integration, there still happen to be certain technical hurdles that have to be overcome so as to achieve them.
In the yesteryears, instrument integration happened to be typically set up in an instrument-by-instrument manner, which is indeed time-consuming from a development as well as a validation standpoint. In today’s time, there are indeed an increasing number of vendors offering middleware solutions that go ahead and tout pre-configured, modular integration solutions. For instance, does one need to integrate a specific brand of HPLC? The vendor has most likely already configured a template for the integration of that specific instrument. There are going to be efforts that would be needed to make sure that the appropriate test method data happens to get transferred to the corresponding results in LIMS; but, the amount of effort has been dipped. Moreover, once that method gets defined, it is easily executed on other instruments, and that too in the same class. As additional instruments get onboarded, a profile can be assigned by way of a middleware, wherein the instruments can be integrated and, at the same time, validated more efficiently.
As there are going to be companies pushing their manufacturing along with laboratory operations into a far more automated spectrum, the expertise when it comes to LIMS so as to integrate itself into a unified platform becomes very crucial. For instance, the advanced robotic sample storage solutions can help the technicians go ahead and select samples and even get them delivered, much like a vending machine. An integrated LIMS can also send the needed sample data to the freezer, which in turn goes on to automatically pick the correct samples. More automation could move samples across the facility to a designated sampling area for the technicians to retrieve. Other kinds of automation, like robotics, that go on to perform method execution, can also go ahead and integrate into the LIMS, hence sending the appropriate sample and also the test method data to the robot for implementation. Following the execution, the result data can be integrated back into LIMS. While this happens to be a nascent area, the possibilities when it comes to laboratory throughput as well as efficiency are undoubtedly tremendous.
Trend #2: Navigating Market Share Issues
The LIMS market happened to be estimated at $2.3 billion in 2023, with an estimated CAGR of 6.8-7.8% all across the end of the decade. As numerous companies across several industries continue to go ahead and at the same time also push for digital laboratories and also enhanced automation, the LIMS demand, which is at the core of laboratory technology, will continue to grow.
Older and, as a matter of fact, more established applications with a strong history of on-premise implementation will continue to keep facing the challenges of web- and cloud-hosted applications. Many other application suites outside of the laboratory have gone ahead and transitioned from on-premise to the cloud, and the fact is that LIMS is no exception. Apart from the desire to lessen the dependence on internal teams to manage LIMS, the associated master data is indeed leading to a rise within the SaaS, which is a Software-as-a-Service LIMS containing multiple vendors, starting with the SaaS options.
It is worth noting that, as for the many types of software, there is going to be a growing contingent of companies that go ahead and wish to outsource the management and hosting of LIMS as opposed to the ones that wish to keep the application on-premise in order to increase control over the application and also decrease dependency when it comes to external providers.
It is well to be noted that the new players continue to go ahead into the LIMS market or into the varied segments of the LIMS market. Veeva happens to be piloting a new LIMS product that does not have large market penetration yet, but their presence as well as the relationships in the eQMS-electronic Quality Management System space could indeed go ahead and significantly enhance their chances of success. Products like Veeva LIMS go on to offer a challenge for some of the more established products, such as LabWare, Thermo Fisher Sample Manager, LabVantage, and StarLIMS, which go on to control almost 80% of the overall LIMS market. LabWare as well as LabVantage happen to have decades of development history and relationships with buyers, but only time will tell if they happen to be able to respond to the new functional offerings so as to maintain their market share.
