A case study of a laboratory information system developed at the institute for cancer research at Candiolo

Research laboratories produce a huge amount of complex and heterogeneous data typically managed by Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMSs). Although many LIMSs are available, it is often difficult to identify a product that covers all the requirements and peculiarities of a specific institution. To deal with this lack, the Candido Cancer Institute decided to start a project, named the Laboratory Assistant Suite (LAS), with the aim of developing a new software platform that assists researchers throughout diverse laboratory activities. The proposed system can track laboratory experiments even in problematic environments, support the integration of heterogeneous biomedical data, and help in decision-making tasks. In this chapter, the authors present the current architecture of the system, some real-use cases, as well as statistics about stored data and user feedback in order to provide an overview of the functionalities and show the effectiveness of the platform in supporting research in the molecular oncology field.