Visual Specimen Manager
A user-friendly web-based tracking software application used to manage cell and tissue specimens stored in ultra-low temperature biorepositories.
Visual Specimen Manager is customizable and provides total flexibility in creating a specimen management solution that fits any specific need or requirement. To ensure maximum productivity and ease of use, Aptia Systems provides workflow and process customization, on-site training, ongoing support and updates.
We help our clients take their ideas for mobile-accessible applications and put them online. We help them work through usability aspects, back-end services, and data-integration. Native applications offer richer capabilities and user experiences. We create native Apple iOS (iPad and iPhone) applications as well as those for Android. We would be glad to discuss your project.
The Need for a New Biorepository Management System
Aptia Systems developed Visual Specimen Manager in collaboration with M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the National Cancer Institute. The tissue biorepository at M.D. Anderson had outgrown the capabilities of a standard spreadsheet inventory management system. Finding nothing suitable on the market, they turned to Aptia Systems for help.
In developing Visual Specimen Manager, our software developers considered several key factors: regulatory compliance, high availability, frequent access to samples by multiple users spread across a large facility, and the varying technical and computer application skill levels of the users. Taking this and other criteria into consideration, we developed a simple to use, web-based, relational database driven application that ensures regulatory compliance with password controls, an audit trail, and bar code capability.
Visual Specimen Manager meets the technical requirements of a compliant system under FDA's 21CFR Part 11, a regulation that covers any electronic system that manages regulated electronic records or uses electronic signatures.
Features and Benefits
- Easy to learn, user-friendly, and versatile
- Search function locates individual samples among the thousands stored
- Graphical user interface has drop down, pre-filled menus for accuracy
- Freezers, tanks, and virtually any storage media are graphically represented on map with clickable icons
- Information windows on boxes and individual samples open when clicked on
- FDA 21CFR Part 11 compliant
- Set up requires minimal time and resources and works in most data centers using MS Server 2008 and MS SQL 2005 and later
- Existing data can be migrated into the database
- Increased workflow and reduced labor costs puts more lab resources into research that benefits everyone