Laboratory

Increasing Lab Efficiency with an Open Source LIMS

A Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) is a software-based laboratory and information management system that provides streamlined workflow automation and management. This type of software is typically used in analytical laboratories such as R&D labs, in-process testing labs and quality assurance labs.

A LIMS seeks to embrace the way you work, offering single sample, batch samples and manual or automated methods, producing reports for internal or external customer use. Management of resources is an important characteristic of planning work allocation against availability and for auto analysers around calibration and maintenance schedules.

There are a number of benefits a LIMS brings to the laboratory environment, most significantly; increased productivity and improved data quality, both of which reduce operating costs and free up human resources from mundane activities. This type of software also serves to improve capacity, offering faster turnaround time for customers, higher accuracy and quality control, live searches, and can interface with other departments.

The task of selecting the best LIMS for an organization can be complicated, in part, because many terms used to describe very different LIMS and system architectures are used interchangeably.

Our ratings chart below captures our recommendations. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion.

Ratings chart for the best free and open source LIMS

Click the links in the table below to learn more about each LIMS.

Laboratory Information Management System
eLabFTWElectronic lab notebook manager for research teams
SENAITEEnterprise Open Source Laboratory System
OpenMRSEnterprise electronic medical record system platform
Bika LIMSPowerful, flexible web based LIMS with full content management integration
Occhiolino Modern Laboratory Information Management System
C4G BLISTrack patients, specimens and laboratory results
OpenELISDesigned for resource-constrained laboratories
MetaLIMSLIMS for small metagenomic laboratories
GNomExGenomic LIMS and Data Repository
Open-LIMSManagement for projects, samples and their related data
Baobab LIMSLIMS for biobanking
FreeLIMSLets users perform Bio-Informatics

This article has been revamped in line with our recent announcement.

Best Free and Open Source SoftwareRead our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software.

The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk.

There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more.
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