I was required to design and develop an online Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) for Stansted Laboratories – a water testing laboratory specialising in microbiological and chemical analysis of water. The project began initially as part of an 8 week summer placement (Shell STEP) in the summer of 2006. I have since been invited to carry on with the project and have now developed a fully functional Intranet Based LIMS which is now in operation.

The system replaces manual logbooks and registers providing a central resource for staff to enter and administer data on on jobs and samples. The system stores all data on a centralised MySQL database. Staff can access the LIMs from any machine within the network via a web browser. The interface is developed in PHP alongside some AJAX functionality where appropriate.

The developed system has dramatically reduced the workload of the lab technicians alongside ensuring integrity of job data due to the elimination of hand written log books with replicated data.

Screenshots

Technology

The following technology is used in both web site and SLIMS

(X)HTML

Both website and SLIMS render as valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets are used to manage the styling.

PHP

PHP was used as the dynamic scripting language

MySQL

MySQL holds and stores all job data on SLIMS

Visit the Stansted Laboratories web site