Summary of Specifications:
The Bexar County Criminal Investigation Laboratory is an ASCLD/LAB accredited laboratory, earning that accreditation in 1998. It is also ISO 17025 accredited. The current Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) is a custom developed solution, implemented in April, 2008 by McLane Custom Technologies. The system is written in ASP.NET and C#.NET, and supported by an Oracle database. The system serves approximately 30 users. The current system lacks the ability for bar code scanning, which causes delays in turn-around times on cases. At present, there are about 50 forensic Serology/DNA cases that require examination for the presence of biological fluids (blood, semen and saliva) and/or DNA analysis. This casework backlog represents an average of a two month waiting period for client law enforcement agencies.As part of an ongoing effort to improve the workload capacity and reduce the backlog of pending forensic Serology/DNA casework, the County is seeking a commercial off-the shelf Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). Some of the benefits of implementing a new LIMS system will include a reduction in the amount of time for data entry and the potential for data entry errors. Other benefits will include an improvement in casework management, automation of chain-of-custody tracking, and enabling clients to view completed reports through a secure online portal.
The new LIMS will integrate instrument results to increase the efficiency of report writing and more efficiently provide reports to clients. This will increase the output capacity of Serology/DNA requests and meet our primary goal of reducing the amount of time a sample requires for genetic analysis. An additional must have feature of the new LIMS will be the ability to perform bar code scanning for evidence.
Bexar County Commissioners Court has authorized the replacement of the existing County Laboratory Information Management System using a “Best Of Breed” commercially available solution.
