Laboratory Operations

The software does not fit how the laboratory works.

It comes up in every kind of lab we work with, from veterinary diagnostic to materials testing labs.

Our software runs in production for clients including UW Veterinary Care, Maine DOT, and NIEHS. Your first step is a thirty-minute conversation with an expert.

Many laboratories run software that records the work in a shape they do not follow. People work around it, and the workaround becomes the real process, kept outside the record. We can help you improve, integrate, extend, or replace what you have, starting with the part of the work that needs it most.

THEN · SOFTWARE MISSES THE WORK A busy 1970s laboratory: a woman with long hair sits at a bench in the foreground, colleagues work at benches behind her, and a cardboard box of samples and a rack of tubes sit on the counter.
Digitally rendered from the archive photograph: Same room and benches; barcoded sample boxes, a laptop at every bench and a monitor on the wall replace the 1976 cardboard box and paper. NOW · START WITH THE WORKFLOWNOW · DIGITALLY RENDERED
Fig. 1 A crime laboratory, 1976.
THEN · 1976 · Library of Congress · NOW · digitally renderedTHEN · 1976 · Library of Congress · Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Black-and-White Negatives · no known restrictions NOW · digitally rendered from the archive photograph above (Gemini 3 Pro Image, 2026-09-26): the room geometry, the camera and the people's positions are the photograph; everything else is generated. Not a photograph.

01The difficulty

People work around the software

A sample type the system cannot hold is tracked in a spreadsheet. A review step the system does not know about happens by email. Research workflows change from project to project, and not all of them fit a standard package.

02Getting started

Start with one workflow your software does not fit

Start with the part of the workflow that needs attention. The work comes in three sizes.

  • An assessment compares each path against how your laboratory actually works. We do it with you in the Understand phase, our on-site analysis of your workflow at a fixed scope and price.
  • A focused intervention closes one gap with a configuration change, an integration, an extension, or FormSense.
  • A broader change replaces the system, with the ongoing services you choose.

We give a price once the work is sized to your records, interfaces, and users. The first step is a conversation with an expert about one workflow your software does not fit.

See pricing · Discuss the workflow

03Where it occurs

Wherever the software models the work differently from your laboratory

Where the gap sits

  • Samples, tests, and methods.
  • Instruments, equipment, and locations.
  • Quality workflows and reporting obligations.
  • Compliance, and the exceptions of a working day.

The laboratories that meet it first

Other problems are in the Laboratory Operations catalog.

04Approaches

Improve, integrate, extend, or replace

  • Improve when the gap is in the process or the configuration. A change to either may close it.
  • Integrate when the software is right for its part of the work and the gap lies between it and another system.
  • Extend when one part of the work has no home in the current system.
  • Replace when the software cannot be shaped to the work, and then one step at a time.

05Tools and services

What fits, and when

delivered example
work delivered for an existing client and described on the Evidence page.
available approach
a product, module or service SynapticSci offers today.
scope to assess
something to establish with your laboratory in the Understand phase, before any tool is chosen.

All Lab Notes

Talk with an expert