History

The Story

LabPipe started as an idea to replace paper based VOC sample collection records in the East Midlands Breathomics Pathology Node (EMBER) project. Initially, we called it OctoEMBER as an internal codename, with the impression that it works like an octopus that grabs data from different sites to the central service. With its successful replacement of the paper record system in EMBER, it then started to support many other research projects.

While supporting these projects, features were gradually added to the tool: email notification, file upload, format conversion, dynamic form configurations, etc.

We decided to rename it to LabPipe, as it now pipelines the data/metadata flow from laboratory instruments to its central web service, and it can now support many research projects through dynamic configurations other than EMBER. It is now supporting 7 research projects across 2 clinical sites on 4 different instruments.

User survey

In 2018, before the LabPipe was presented in the poster session at IABR Breath Summit 2018, we carried out a user experience survey among the users of average 9 months use of the tool per user/scenario. Across all instruments deployed with LabPipe, 80% of the scenarios have reported very useful with average 68% time saved compared to paper-based system.

LabPipe user survey key results (2018)

LabPipe was actively maintained and developed since the survey, and still is. Many features were added afterwards to improve user experiences, such as interactive tour, guided form wizard, in-app alert, etc.