Date
July 2024
Overview
The National Institute of Justice (NIJ), in partnership with the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCOE) at RTI International, formed the Forensic Laboratory Needs Technology Working Group (FLN-TWG). The FLN-TWG supports NIJ’s mission to improve knowledge and understanding of the forensic technology needs of federal, state, local, and tribal forensic practitioners, and crime laboratories.
Laboratory Management Information Systems (LIMS) are computer-based systems that help manage and organize laboratory data, documentation, and processes. They are used in a variety of settings, including medical, research, industrial, and forensic science laboratories. LIMS assist with tasks such as evidence tracking, sample tracking, data management, and compliance reporting. This publication aims to inform LIMS stakeholders and users on the desired and necessary functional requirements of a modern LIMS in a forensic science service provider (FSSP) laboratory. The purpose of this document is to help those seeking to determine the appropriate specifications and checklists for functional requirements necessary for adoption by FSSP laboratories.
This document provides FSSP decision-makers with an overview of functionalities that a LIMS should include. An excel download is provided with a more comprehensive list of functional requirements to assist with discovering and enumerating functional requirements, both when developing purchasing requirements and creating documents after procuring a new LIMS. Furthermore, this list could be useful to LIMS developers to assess and possibly incorporate the features discussed here into their products. In addition to compiling a list of functional requirements for a modern LIMS, the authors have forecasted what functional requirements may be necessary for a next generation LIMS.
In addition to functional requirements, this document includes a section on next-generation (NG) LIMS. The NG-LIMS includes information on the future of LIMS may look like and provides an initial framework to spark discussions among the community.
Related Resource
Funding for this Forensic Technology Center of Excellence report was provided by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.
The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Justice.
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