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Many people in the laboratory industry will have heard of Autoscribe Informatics and its Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) solution, Matrix Gemini. Autoscribe celebrates 40 years in business this year, making it one of the earliest suppliers of LIMS.

Founded in 1981, Autoscribe Ltd is a privately owned UK Company. Over the years it has expanded to have staff and offices in USA and Australia as well as a network of distributors worldwide. Autoscribe remains a family business with three generations of the Boother family involved, and the same customer centric values as 40 years ago. The Matrix product has evolved over that time from being supplied on floppy disks and running on 1980s computer technology, to the current solution running on modern 64-bit servers with browser or desktop applications that support on-premise or cloud deployment.

The common theme of the founding father, John Boother, has always been the need for flexibility. From his laboratory experience he knew that no two laboratories were ever the same. Each had unique requirements in the way they worked, from the type of sample information captured during registration, to the data needed to be shown during result approval and the test reports generated. Consequently, even from the early days of Matrix LIMS, flexibility was key to the product.

The current Matrix Gemini LIMS v6.0 continues to provide users with an ultra-flexible configuration interface. Changes can be made to any screen in the system by the users themselves. Changes, having been approved, are available for all users. The configurable web-based interface provides an ability to work remotely, from anywhere, while still preserving this ultra-flexible configuration capability. Uniquely among LIMS vendors, even changes made by users are fully supported by Autoscribe through direct expert-led helpdesk support. The underlying software is never touched or modified by the users allowing software updates to be easily applied without corrupting modified screens or workflows.  Configuration is done using the built-in editing tools; coding skills (such as C#, html or Java) are not required. This allows clients to change the system to suit their needs while preserving the ability to upgrade to new versions of the software to take advantage of new and improved features, all in the safe knowledge that their support agreements are never compromised.

40 years on Autoscribe is listening to its laboratory customers and driving Matrix LIMS forward to meet those needs. “I’m excited about the trajectory of Autoscribe and how we are winning business across a broad range of industries and laboratory types,” said John Boother, Chairman of Autoscribe Informatics. “I’m proud that at its core Matrix LIMS remains as flexible today as our vision for it was at the beginning of this journey. It is as suitable for Companies with a single small laboratory or multinationals, with multiple laboratories on multiple sites. A truly scalable solution whether on-premise or cloud based. Both our underlying software and our configured market specific starter systems continue to rapidly evolve to meet new challenges. Autoscribe is poised to help drive the laboratory industry forward in the 2020s, and beyond, just as much as in those early days.”

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