Arkansas Division of Environmental Quality Implements Confience’s TITAN® LIMS to Help Laboratory Achieve Long-Term Goals

Due to the limitations of their existing LIMS, ADEQ began evaluating alternative LIMS solutions, especially systems known to be strong solutions for the environmental market. In addition to listing the shortcomings in their current LIMS, the team spent time defining a list of additional requirements. These requirements would enable them to achieve future goals including becoming a NELAP compliant laboratory. Following guidelines required by the State of Arkansas, a comprehensive Request for Proposal (RFP) was developed and posted through their normal procurement process. Additional team members were brought in for a more formal evaluation process.

The ADEQ team discussed and graded the RFP responses and presentations. TITAN was seen as the best choice for ADEQ. The team was impressed with TITAN’s ability to address the laboratory’s functional LIMS requirements. ADEQ also looked at the strength of the LIMS vendors from a training and support standpoint and were clearly impressed with Confience’s capabilities in these areas.

TITAN would be central to helping ADEQ achieve many of their current and future goals, including:

· Reducing the amount of paper being generated in the lab. Paper is costly to maintain and means much of the data is being captured and used with manual processes  that are inefficient and prone to human error.

· ADEQ was impressed with TITAN’s interface design from an ease-of-use standpoint. A user-friendly system would ensure that laboratory staff could fully leverage TITAN’s powerful capabilities.

· Implementing TITAN was critical for adoption of a review/approve/validate process that would help boost lab productivity, standardize accepted lab procedures, and improve data quality.

· TITAN provides ADEQ with a level of powerful traceability and auditing. This gives ADEQ management the confidence that if any questions are raised about a specific  test performed in the past, TITAN will quickly provide a complete history of that test. Traceability in TITAN will also play a key role in helping the laboratory achieve and  maintain requirements for NELAP compliance.

· Using TITAN will provide inventory tracking of the lab’s chemical and reagent supplies and alert staff when inventory falls below pre-defined reorder levels,  enhancing lab efficiency. Inventory reporting will also provide a level of cost control that management has never experienced before.

· Implementing TITAN also includes the interfacing of ADEQ’s scientific instruments and installing bar code printer and hand scanner technology. This provides a complete laboratory automation solution that eliminates paper while increasing the productivity of the lab staff.

· Instruments interfaced with TITAN LIMS:

       ·  Agilent GC/MS Model7890A/2400 w/ Teledyne

       ·  Atomx Autosampler

      ·  Agilent ICP-OES 5100SVDV

      ·  GE Analytical, Sievers TOC5310 C

      ·  GE Analytical, Sievers TOCM5310 C

      ·  HACH Orion Conductivity MeterHQ 40d Multi

      ·  HACH Lachet Quik Chem 8500 Series 2

      ·  HF Scientific Turbidimeter Micro 100

      ·  Sartorius Analytical Balance MSA 124S-100DI

      ·  Shimadzu GC-2010 Plus AE -DRO

      ·  Hydra AF Mercury Analyzer

      ·  Hydra C Mercury Analyzer

      ·  Shimadzu GC -2010 Plus AE – PCB

      ·  Thermo Dionex IC-2100

      ·  Thermo ICP-MSX-Series 2

      ·  Thermo OrionVersaStar pH meter

      ·  Varion GC/MS Model 3890/4000

      ·  Westco Discrete Analyzer Smart Chem

Confience’s Professional Services Team also contributed two key deliverables as part of the final TITAN LIMS solution. First, Confience engineers developed a Chain of Custody (CoC) import that allowed field inspectors to download all the information from their CoC records seamlessly into TITAN. This was a manual procedure previously and was a source of errors in transcription and interpretation of handwriting. The CoC is now saved with the work order and easily retrieved in TITAN.

Second, Confience engineers converted the data from previous in-house databases and the LIMS by writing stored procedures to move all of the data into TITAN, for easy accessibility, security, and easier maintenance. Having all environmental data (over 30 years of data) in one secure database format allowed access by different program users within ADEQ.