European Institute of Oncology Implements LIMS for Biobanks

The European Institute of Oncology (IEO), a Milan, Italy-based organisation committed to making an active contribution to fighting cancer, has implemented a new laboratory information management system to more efficiently manage its biospecimen data.

IEO is now using Thermo Scientific LIMS to process more than 4,000 biospecimens annually, including liquids, solids and DNA/RNA. Previously, IEO’s data management solution did not allow integration across multiple platforms, so information remained in silos or needed to be combined manually. Now, sample data is integrated across multiple systems including WHospital, a management system of medical records that contains demographic information, administrative episodes and patient informed consent; Armonia, which contains all diagnostic pathological results; and Banca Anagrafica Centrale (BAC), the IEO central registry.

“Thermo Scientific LIMS is a phenomenal platform for automating and streamlining IEO’s biobanking workflows,” said Giuseppina Bonizzi, IEO Biobank and Biomolecular Resource Infrastructure (IBBRI) coordinator. “The software is specifically designed to simplify the tracking and management of our biosamples and biospecimen collection, including localisation and patient demographics. Its ability to aggregate information from multiple existing software systems allows us to automatically integrate samples with a patient’s clinical and pathological data.”

“IEO is doing vital work that ultimately impacts global health, so the institute must be highly organised and hyper efficient,” said Kim Shah, Director of Marketing and New Business Development, Informatics, for Thermo Fisher. “Better data management is a prerequisite for process improvement and greater efficiency, and the automation and integration capabilities of Thermo Scientific LIMS enable organisations such as IEO to be as agile as possible.”

Thermo Scientific LIMS for biobanks is designed to address the unique challenges of managing biospecimen collection, location, online requests (including consent management and request management), chain of custody, data compliance and security, instrument integration and automation and client billing.