Angela Quinn is Quality Manager of the Public Health Microbiology Laboratory in University Hospital Galway - a food, water and environmental testing laboratory.
She recently attended the Customer Education Conference (CEC) hosted by Labware in Dublin on 12th to 16th June 2017 as part of the safefood Training and Mobility Funding programme. This was a European Conference attended by over 500 delegates from all over Europe and Labware Consultants from all over the world. In the report below, she tells us about her experience.
Aims and Objectives
Our Laboratory was one of the first laboratories in Ireland to install a Labware Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) in 2004. Our system has been configured and tailored to our needs over the intervening years but I was anxious to see what new functionality and innovations Labware have available now, as they are continuously updating their system.
We are ready to implement the newest Version 7 of the software in July. I hoped to network with other people at the conference, who have already implemented Version 7 in their laboratories, and to find out about any problems they might have encountered.
I also hoped to avail of Labware training which would help in my role as LIMS Administrator for our laboratory.
Purpose and relevance
The Labware CEC is an opportunity to network with the other delegates who all have Labware LIMS and to meet Labware consultants. It is a wonderful opportunity to undergo valuable training at a beginner’s, intermediate or advanced level.
Activities
The Labware CEC consisted of:
- Presentations from different Labware consultants and customers on how they have implemented their LIMS projects. Most presentations included live demos and showcased the newest innovations.
- Industry sessions from large companies
- Special interest sessions, explaining Labware strategies for new projects which also included feedback from Labware delegates.
- Training workshops which allow interaction with delegates
- Training courses which were delivered in a classroom style which taught delegates different topics. These courses included training manuals which contained exercises to be completed by each participant individually to ensure competency after the training.
Transfer of knowledge
Labware endeavoured to impart a huge amount of knowledge and training to the delegates at the CEC with over 72 hours of training available, as well as other sessions and presentations.
All delegates also gave their email addresses for publication at the conference so that they could continue to share information.
Benefits of the visit
This Labware Conference was packed full of information and training. The variety of training available was excellent. This meant that training could be carried out in a short time frame, instead of having to waste valuable working time and money to travel long distances to the training courses, which are often only available in the UK for European clients.
Labware demonstrated their mobile LIMS which can be used on Android or iPhones and all information is returned to the server via web-based LIMS. They also showed their ELN (Electronic Laboratory Notebook) which is a computer program designed to replace paper laboratory notebooks.
I was able to network with delegates from Norway, Sweden, Turkey, England, Scotland, Wales, Spain, France and Ireland. Everyone was happy to impart their experiences of issues and successes with Labware LIMS. The Labware consultants were also glad to answer any questions the delegates had.
Conclusion
I would recommend this Labware CEC to all Labware LIMS users, LIMS administrators and laboratory managers. It was both informative and entertaining, as Labware hosted some highly entertaining evening events which could also be used by delegates to network with each other. My thanks to safefood and Labware for funding this very enjoyable conference.
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