Portfolio

Guides and white papers

Note that the year indicated is the year the content was last updated, not necessarily the year it was first researched and written. An attempt has been made to update these guides within two years from the last publication. However, due to time constraints and the numerous projects from the client over the years, it hasn't always been easy. In at least one case (the COVID-19 testing guide), an upper-level decision was made to not put more work into maintaining it.

You may notice numerous red links in these items. The immensity of the work associated with many of these documents can't be understated. Numerous encyclopedic and vendor articles help support the content, and it is beyond my available time to import every page linked throughout these documents. As always, a link to the original is included in the top header information.

Finally, I can't understate that most of this content was developed in MediaWiki, which I've been using extensively for nearly two decades. While most of my experience is on the front-end maintenance and upgrading, I've slowly picked up a thing or two about the back end of maintaining the software. As such, I have plenty of experience in adding, managing, moving, and updating MediaWiki-based content and styles.

Researched, written, and revised by me

• Choosing and Implementing a Cloud-based Service for Your Laboratory (2023): This guide looks at the specifics of cloud computing and applies them to the world of laboratory software. It includes appendices of cloud and security service providers, as well as request for information (RFI) questionnaires.
• Clinical, Health, and Scientific Informatics Programs in Higher Education (2021): I was requested to seek out as many relevant clinical, health, and scientific informatics programs in higher education as possible, research and develop a university page for each entity, and then detail in tabular form all the programs for easier comparison. Note that for this portfolio, none of the 272 university pages are loaded; a link to the original showing the full extent of the work is included on the intro page of this portfolio version.

• Comprehensive Guide to Developing and Implementing a Cybersecurity Plan (2023): This guide examines cybersecurity planning in the scope of several frameworks. "The guide attempts to be helpful to most any organization attempting to navigate the challenges of cybersecurity planning, with a slight bias towards laboratories implementing and updating information systems."
• The Comprehensive Guide to Physician Office Laboratory Setup and Operation (2022): This guide holistically examines the current state of the physician office laboratory (POL), with added context post-COVID-19. Testing, equipment, data management, reimbursement, and more are addressed for this somewhat niche laboratory type.
• COVID-19 Testing, Reporting, and Information Management in the Laboratory (2021): This was a unique guide in that it was difficult to keep contemporaneous, given the rapidly evolving state of the COVID-19 pandemic, along with trying to meet other work obligations. The first iteration came out in May 2020 as more details were emerging, and multiple updates went into it until September 2021. The client decided to cease updates at that point.
• FDA Food Safety Modernization Act Final Rule on Laboratory Accreditation for Analyses of Foods: Considerations for Labs and Informatics Vendors (2022): This mid-length information article examines the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Laboratory Accreditation for Analyses of Foods (LAAF) rule "and how they affect laboratories that are and want to become LAAF-accredited." It also examines what considerations laboratory informatics vendors might need to take into account for their software.
• The Laboratories of Our Lives: Labs, Labs Everywhere! (2022): One of my somewhat earlier works, first appearing in 2017, this guide takes the reader down a path that demonstrates how laboratories intersect our lives at every turn. It looks at a wide swath of industries and points out what types of testing occur within those industries, as well as how how those associated laboratories impact the average person's life today.
• Laboratory Informatics Buyer's Guide for Medical Diagnostics and Research (2022): "This guide addresses the medical diagnostics and research laboratories in their myriad forms, as well as how laboratory informatics solutions like the laboratory information management system (LIMS) can benefit them," as well as "the numerous considerations that should be made" before acquiring said solutions.
• Laboratory, Scientific, and Health Informatics Buyer's Guide (2023): This mid-length single-page buyer's guide is an extension of work dating back to the late 2000s by the Laboratory Informatics Institute. It provides brief information about acquiring laboratory informatics applications, vendors with public pricing, and other resources for the potential buyer.
• LIMS Buyer’s Guide for Cannabis Testing Laboratories (2021): This guide gives cannabis testing laboratories a head start on identifying laboratory informatics solutions that meet the needs of their workflow. Some of the information provides a review of the state of cannabis testing, which is also useful for anyone just learning about the subject. Finally, it includes a customized RFI for the cannabis testing lab seeking informatics software.
• LIMS Selection Guide for Food Safety and Quality (2023): This guide examines the current state of the multi-disciplinary food and beverage testing industry. Complex in its roles within society, the guide delves into the nuances of those different roles, while addressing the informatics resources necessary to assist the modern lab with its workflows.
• LIMS Selection Guide for ISO/IEC 17025 Laboratories (2023): ISO/IEC 17025 places additional requirements on laboratories seeking to maintain those standards, and the laboratory informatics solution chosen needs to address that. This guide looks at LIMSpec and the ISO standard, pairing them to requirements as they should apply to vendor solutions.
• LIMS Selection Guide for Manufacturing Quality Control (2023): Quality is a vital aspect of the manufacturing process, for numerous reasons. This guide addresses some of those reasons and how a laboratory informatics solution tailored to the industry helps workflows. It also includes a LIMSpec-driven requirements document for the industry.
• LIMSpec 2022 R2 (2022): This guide identifies laboratory informatics functionality requirements for laboratories in general, with some specialty functionality, and presents them in a tabular fashion. Includes a .docx version.
• LIMSpec for Cannabis Testing (2023): This guide identifies laboratory informatics functionality requirements for cannabis testing laboratories and presents them using the LIMSpec 2022 R2 specification. Includes a .docx version.
• Past, Present, and Future of Cannabis Laboratory Testing and Regulation in the United States (2022): Another example of a guide starter earlier (2017), this one has seen multiple updates as cannabis regulations have changed regularly over the years. This has in turn affected laboratory testing, and many other aspects, in regards to cannabis. This guide looks at where the world has been, is, and might be when it comes to cannabis and its testing for quality and safety.

Co-authored by me

• Justifying LIMS Acquisition and Deployment within Your Organization (2023): Industry veteran Joe Liscouski addresses the practical considerations of the acquisition and deployment of LIMS and other laboratory informatics solutions in the lab, with many editorial and writing contributions from me, in particular regarding management and stakeholder buy-in.
• Starting a Cannabis Testing Laboratory (2023): This mid-length information article examines the various aspects of setting up and running a cannabis testing labs. I address many of the latter topics, while industry veteran Alan Vaughn contributed to the initial discussion on the business plan.

Edited by me, authored by others

• The Application of Informatics to Scientific Work: Laboratory Informatics for Newbies (2021): Industry veteran Joe Liscouski takes an introductory look at the "role that informatics can play in assisting scientists, engineers, and technicians in their efforts."
• Are You a Laboratory Automation Engineer? (2021): Representing some of his earlier work (originally published in 2006), Liscouski discusses the concept of "laboratory automation engineering," the application of laboratory informatics concepts across a scientific enterprise.
• Considerations in the Automation of Laboratory Procedures (2021): Automating laboratories isn't a straightforward task, and in this entry Liscouski gets into the the finer details of transitioning from standard laboratory operations to workflows with automated systems.

• Directions in Laboratory Systems: One Person's Perspective (2021): Here Liscouski provides "one person's perspective on planning for the use of computer systems in the laboratory, and with it a means of developing a direction for the future."
• Elements of Laboratory Technology Management (2021): Here Liscouski discusses at length the state of technology management for the laboratory circa 2014.
• HIPAA Compliance: An Introduction (2022): Industry veteran Alan Vaughn takes an introductory look at what HIPAA compliance means to a laboratory. First edition released in 2016.
• Laboratory Technology Planning and Management: The Practice of Laboratory Systems Engineering (2020): As Liscouski puts it: "This document was written to get people thinking more seriously about the technologies used in laboratory work and how those technologies contribute to meeting the challenges labs are facing."
• Notes on Instrument Data Systems (2020): In this relatively brief missive, Liscouski discusses the instrument data system (IDS) from his years of perspective on their use.
• Organizational Memory and Laboratory Knowledge Management: Its Impact on Laboratory Information Flow and Electronic Notebooks (2024): One of his most recent articles, Liscouski discusses the topics of organizational memory, electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs), and artificial intelligence (AI) mechanisms.
• Planning for Disruptions in Laboratory Operations (2022): This article by Liscouski addresses how laboratory operations can be better organized and managed to account for any number of possible disruptions to workflows.
• The Practical Guide to the U.S. Physician Office Laboratory (2014): This was one of the first non-encyclopedic articles developed on the wiki, by Dr. Fein. Of course, this makes it one of my earlier editing collaborations.
• A Science Student's Guide to Laboratory Informatics (2023): Noting gaps in undergraduate training in the use of informatics applications, Liscouski presents some of the most relevant topics about the topic in this mid-length article.

Question and answer articles

I've developed more than 30 question and answer (Q&A) articles for LIMSwiki since 2022. These articles roughly have a word limit of 1,200 words, but they exceed that at times when necessary. The general idea here is a question is asked relating to laboratories, industries requiring laboratories, regulations, and more that have a tie-in to laboratory informatics applications like the LIMS. All 34 can be found on LIMSwiki. A representative sample of them are listed below:

• Is there a benefit to utilizing both a LIMS and an ELN in the lab?
• What types of testing occur within a medical microbiology laboratory?
• What are the alternatives to a laboratory information management system (LIMS)?
• What are the key elements of a LIMS for animal feed testing?
• What are the key elements of a LIMS for construction and engineering?
• What are the key elements of a LIMS for food and beverage testing?
• What role does interoperability and systems integration play in the laboratory, and why is this important to address?
• What standards and regulations affect a construction and engineering laboratory?
• What standards and regulations affect a food and beverage laboratory?
• What standards and regulations affect a materials testing laboratory?
• What types of laboratory testing are affected by ISO/IEC 17025?
• What types of testing occur within a construction and engineering laboratory?

Encyclopedic articles

Here are some representative examples of encyclopedic articles I've created over the years on LIMSwiki.

Topics

• Evolutionary informatics
• Forensic science
• Genome informatics
• Health informatics
• Imaging informatics
• Informatics (academic field)
• Physician office laboratory

Cloud vendors

• Alibaba Cloud
• Amazon Web Services
• Dell Technologies Cloud
• Google Cloud
• IBM Cloud
• Microsoft Azure
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

Journal articles

I've added an open-access journal article to LIMSwiki on a weekly basis since mid-2015. Each article received soft editing for grammar and readability, with occasional fixes to broken URLs and even missing citations. The culmination of these edited journal articles can be found in the Journal: namespace of LIMSwiki.org.

Help guides

• MediaWiki basics (2015): This is a set of guides briefly addressing how to use MediaWiki markdown language on LIMSwiki.
• Using the Internet Archive (2017): This brief help article intended to help new MediaWiki users use the Internet Archive as part of the research and citation efforts.