LIMS becoming crucial in European pharma industry

The demand for integrated informatics frameworks in the pharmaceutical industry is driving the production of a new generation of laboratory information management systems (LIMS), according to new analysis from global consulting company Frost & Sullivan.

European Markets for Laboratory Information Management Systems finds that the markets generated revenues of US$41.4m (Euro 25.9m) in 2007 and are estimated to reach $248.0m (€155m) in 2014.

"The need to manage the information deluge is the key driver for the LIMS market," said Frost & Sullivan research analyst Prabakar Sampath. "LIMS applications are considered mission-critical systems, since efficient storage, retrieval and sharing of information with other business intelligence software is crucial to the business process."

The need to deduce system-level knowledge for biological processes requires information to be annotated and formatted using standard procedures. LIMS vendors are therefore improving their product portfolios to offer efficient integration with business process software.

However, mounting research costs and waning r&d productivity in Europe is a cause of concern for LIMS vendors. Despite efforts by the EC and EFPIA, there has been a consistent decrease in the number of research r&d sites in Europe.

"The increase in outsourcing of research and manufacturing activities to Asian countries and the mounting dominance of the US has exposed the vulnerability of Europe as a market for r&d," Sampath warned. "Although eastern European markets offer new opportunities, pricing pressures are very high on LIMS vendors."

Service and support costs constitute the main stream of revenues for vendors. It is therefore crucial to provide customers with up-to-date technologies to address their evolving data management needs. The reduction of implementation time through the provision of configurable LIMS solutions and decreasing multi-site licensing costs via standardisation are important attributes in this regard.