LabVantage Solutions, Inc., Somerset, N.J., announced that the 8.7 edition of its flagship LabVantage LIMS will provide a secure self-service web portal for the lab’s external clients.

With the LabVantage LIMS 8.7 upgrade, customers will be able to extend appropriate access rights outside the laboratory via the Portal, while protecting their valuable and sensitive data, eschewing the need for manual requests for tests and other services.

“LabVantage LIMS, as an enterprise solution, is deployed exclusively for internal use only within a customer’s highly secure network,” says Mikael Hagstroem, CEO at LabVantage Solutions. “Allowing external clients to request laboratory testing or place orders for test kits wasn’t a simple task previously, and typically meant dealing with manual processes and paperwork. To automate the process previously required installing additional servers and custom-built or third-party software. The LabVantage 8.7 Portal was developed within a single platform to overcome these challenges and make it easy to implement in a manner that is both secure and efficient.”

While manual requests—traditionally sent via phone, fax, email, or even surface mail—can be inefficient and prone to human error, providing direct access to the LIMS can be a serious violation of GxP guidelines and may risk data security and violate privacy. The LabVantage LIMS 8.7 Portal completely segregates functions, so while all internal and external users have access to the same portal data, external portal users have no access to the rest of the LIMS.

This release of LabVantage LIMS also aims to improve the user experience with a new, next-generation cockpit-style user interface that allows users to navigate safely, efficiently, and with little or no training. The new user interface uses ReactJS technology, which makes page updates much faster for a better user experience. Plans are to leverage this technology in future versions of LabVantage LIMS, for on-premise, cloud-hosted, and SaaS deployments.

In addition, the new release improves customers’ ability to support themselves, leveraging existing knowledge of LabVantage functions, configurability, and other skills, and ensures consistency by using the same toolsets as previous versions of LabVantage LIMS.

“Our customers had significant input into this new version of LabVantage LIMS,” Hagstroem says. “As always, we look to provide both innovative solutions to real-world challenges our customers face, as well as the best-possible user experience. LabVantage 8.7 achieves both of those goals and leverages our technology leadership and our platform’s outstanding record of scalability.”