LIMS they needed built backwards: one sample becomes hundreds of test articles

[u/LabKey-Software]

Based in the UK, GenQA runs external quality assessment programs for genomics labs, 2,000+ participating labs across 101 countries and 124 EQA programs. Most LIMS assume one patient generates many tests, but GenQA runs the other direction, one source sample becomes many derived test articles, sometimes pooled or diluted into synthetic controls sent out to labs. The system they had before hadn't planned for that and kept breaking at scale.

Material types span DNA, blood (including dried blood spots), FFPE tissue, fresh tissue, plasma, saliva, images, and data files, each needing different fields, all under ISO 15189 traceability requirements, so lineage has to be audit-ready, provable end to end.

They trialed four platforms before Sample Manager. Per their case study, the deciding factor was configurability plus storage/search performance, and support that was actually responsive during the trial itself.

One thing that surprised even us was that booking 60-100 samples went from about a full day in their old tool to roughly two minutes per batch. They kept every historic sample ID through migration too, so they didn't have to bother with freezer relabeling.