Template:Latest news

July 24, 2020:

After some on-again, off-again research, we finally had time to put the finishing touches on a cybersecurity guide. With more laboratories than ever using networked hardware and software tools to manage data, improve workflows, and provide insights, it seemed time to address the importance of laboratories focusing on cybersecurity. We say "laboratories," but to be fair, our completed Comprehensive Guide to Developing and Implementing a Cybersecurity Plan and its companion piece, An Example Cybersecurity Plan, will undoubtedly be useful to practically any business wanting to take a start at or improve existing cybersecurity planning. The guide provides background to cybersecurity planning, proposes a 10-step process for creating a plan, and offers up a simplified version of security controls from NIST Special Publication 800-53, Rev. 4, tied into our existing LIMSpec document. The example plan puts that 10-step process to work in the fictional environmental lab ABC123 Co. We hope you find both documents useful. May your cybersecurity efforts be fruitful!

Shawn Douglas (talk) 17:02, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

June 1, 2020:

The Most Popular Pages section has been removed from the front page of LIMSwiki today. For much of its existence, it stood as a fun means to see which pages were receiving the most viewer traffic, while also providing insights into which pages deserved a touch more editing attention. However, in recent years, it has been coopted by others to artificially inflate page views of specific vendor pages, to give those vendors a higher and unjustified ranking. This largely destroyed the original fun and intent of the tool, leaving it largely meaningless. In retrospect, a tool that included the word "popular" was inevitably going to be turned into a popularity contest, which is partially my fault. Alas ...

Shawn Douglas (talk) 17:17, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

May 20, 2020:

It pleases me to announce the release of Edition 1.0 of the guide COVID-19 Testing, Reporting, and Information Management in the Laboratory. Given the rapidly changing state of the COVID-19 pandemic, this guide will receive minor updates every few weeks, or as needed (and thus the decimal editioning). The guide was created to address the evolving status of laboratory testing, reporting, and information management for the COVID-19 disease and pandemic. Aside from testing, reporting, and informatics topics related to COVID-19 (and other respiratory diseases), the guide also addresses tangential issues such as the slight relaxation of regulatory requirements like HIPAA and CLIA, as well as the technological advantages and challenges associated with digital contact tracing. The guide has a strong leaning towards the U.S. demographic, but several aspects of the guide branch out beyond the U.S. I hope you find it useful.

Shawn Douglas (talk) 18:17, 20 May 2020 (UTC)