Lab instrument integration is software that connects a laboratory's instruments and systems, so that each result is passed from one to the next without anyone copying it by hand. It is the first step towards a self-driving lab, a laboratory in which software directs the instruments.
Why is this needed? A typical laboratory has instruments from many makers: balances, pH meters, chromatographs, plate readers. Each one saves its data in its own format. The laboratory's main systems, such as the LIMS, need that data in their own format. In many laboratories, a person still reads a number off a screen, writes it in a notebook and types it into the LIMS. Every copy is a chance for a mistake, and in a regulated laboratory every mistake must be investigated.
Take, for example, a contract testing laboratory in Visakhapatnam that tests medicines for several drug makers. It has 40 instruments from eight makers. An analyst weighs a sample on a balance: 0.5032 grams. Before integration, she wrote 0.5032 in her notebook, and a second employee checked her entry against the balance's printout. Now the integration software reads the weight straight from the balance. It sends it to the LIMS, labelled with the sample number, the balance's ID and the time. Later, the software collects the results file from the chromatograph, turns it into the LIMS's format and sends that too. Nobody types either number.
The software connects to each instrument and each system through an API, a fixed way in which one program asks another for data or sends data to it. Where an instrument has no API, the software reads its output files or its printer port. Every transfer is logged, so the laboratory can prove that the number in the LIMS is the number the instrument produced. This proof is part of GxP rules.
The same connections also serve research. Results from cell analysis instruments and chromatography and mass spectrometry can be passed to AI drug discovery software, which uses them to choose the next molecules to make. Instruments in electronics laboratories, such as oscilloscopes, are connected in a similar way.
Once the instruments are connected, the laboratory can also plan their use. That work is described in lab equipment scheduling.