Leaving Element or HORIZON LIMS? Move on Your Own Timeline

Isn't it easier to just stay with Clinisys?#

Staying with Clinisys still means moving to a new system. Clinisys says Promium Element LIMS will be integrated into its Clinisys Laboratory Solutions family over time. Either way, you migrate your data, rebuild your reports, reconnect your instruments and validate everything again.

Promium said so itself. In 2021, it told Element customers that version 7 was “not a simple field-for-field upgrade” and that “any customizations you have produced yourself will most likely have to be replicated.” That was just a version upgrade.

If you have to rebuild either way, rebuild on a LIMS that isn’t being merged into someone else’s platform.

We’ve been building LabLynx LIMS since 2000. It has never been renamed, resold or merged into another company’s platform.

Will we have to change the way our lab works?#

No. We set up LabLynx LIMS around the way your lab already works. Most labs have spent years bending their process to fit their software. With us, you keep what’s good about your process and get rid of the workarounds.

It starts with an assessment, before you commit to anything. We sit down with your team and list everything your current system does. That list is almost always longer than you expect.

Here’s what a typical assessment finds. A 60-person environmental lab, accredited in four states, told us it had 5 export formats, 80 reports and 30 instruments. When we counted together, it had 124 reports, 38 instruments and 4 client EDDs nobody had documented. (Our examples combine details from real projects, so no customer is identified.)

The good news is that you’ll probably need less than you think. Fifty of that lab’s reports hadn’t run in two years, so we retired them together. At an agricultural lab, fertilizer recommendations were buried in report templates. We moved that logic into the LIMS, where everyone can see it, and retired 18 old templates.

You walk away with a written plan that shows what moves, what retires and how long it will take.

How do we know nothing gets missed?#

We run your old system and LabLynx LIMS side by side on your real samples until the results match. This parallel run tests the way your lab actually works, with your data, your clients and your reports.

It almost always catches something, and it’s usually something the old system had been getting wrong for years. Here are three examples from past projects:

• A missing flag. One client’s custom EDD was dropping the J flag on low-level results. The data was right, but the flag never reached the client.
• The wrong average. A city water utility’s old system counted non-detects as zero in its monthly discharge averages. One plant’s permit required a different rule, so the lab confirmed the correct method with the permit writer before the first report went out.
• The wrong basis. An agricultural lab’s feed report was comparing as-received results to a spec written on a dry-matter basis.

All three labs fixed these issues before go-live, and the environmental lab sent its client a corrected history.

It’s better to find these now than to hear about them from a client or an assessor.

How long does it take to move to LabLynx LIMS?#

Most mid-size labs are live on LabLynx LIMS in 7 to 9 months. Multi-industry, multi-site and enterprise moves can take up to 18 months. We’ll tell you which group you’re in after the assessment, before you sign anything.

You choose the season, and we plan around your calendar. The agricultural lab’s volume triples every spring, so we scheduled go-live for its slow season and gave staff a full dry run first. The spring rush ran on the new system with no backlog.

What happens to our team during the move?#

Most labs underestimate how much the move depends on their staff. A new system only sticks when your people trust it and know how to use it. That’s why every LabLynx migration plans training first.

We train your department leads first, so every bench has a go-to person on day one. We put your accreditation notice on the project plan, with a date and an owner. If you’re TNI-accredited, see what a TNI/NELAP assessor looks for. We help your lab validate the new system before it touches a single reportable result.

The water utility had a second deadline. The supervisor who built most of its setup was retiring. She helped validate the new system and trained her replacement on it. Reports went out on time from the first month, and what she knew didn’t walk out the door with her.

Why LabLynx LIMS?#

When you plan the move, you control it. You set go-live around your busy season and your next assessment. You keep what works and drop what doesn’t. And you land on a LIMS built by the same company for more than 25 years.

LabLynx LIMS for environmental testing tracks chain of custody from the field to the final report and sends your state and client EDDs from one system. We can host it, or you can.

If you’re still weighing your options, our LIMS resource hub covers the rest of the decision.

Every lab in these examples found more in its old system than it expected, and retired a lot of it. The side-by-side run caught something that mattered. And each move ended on a set date.

Ready to start your assessment? Send us what you have. It doesn’t need to be polished.

Promium Element LIMS, HORIZON LIMS and Apollo LIMS are trademarks of their owners. LabLynx is not affiliated with Clinisys.