Vendor:Semaphore Solutions, Inc.

**Semaphore Solutions, Inc.**
Type	Corporation
Industry	Software development
Headquarters	200-844 Courtney St., Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Number of locations	1
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Peter Smith, Mark Swinkels
Products	Products list Custom software solutions; ; Labbit;
Website	semaphoresolutions.com; labbit.com
LinkedIn	https://www.linkedin.com/company/semaphore-solutions/

Semaphore Solutions, Inc. develops custom laboratory informatics software solutions (with a specialization in NGS), provides consulting support for laboratories, and provides support for Illumina's BaseSpace Clarity laboratory information management system (LIMS). The company also develops and distributes its Labbit software solution for molecular diagnostics labs.

History

The company was formally founded in British Columbia, Canada in December 2009.^[1]

In the spring of 2022, hinted at the release of a new LIMS, Labbit, to be demoed at Bio-IT World 2022.^[2] The software became publicly available later in the fall.

Technology and products

Custom development and support

Semaphore Solutions, Inc. operates as a blend of custom software developer, software support group, and consultancy. The business is able to augment a client's existing software development team, build a laboratory software development team for a client, or provide their own software development expertise to clients.^[3] Semaphore also provides post-implementation technical support for Illumina's BaseSpace Clarity LIMS, as well as development of Clarity custom protocols, instrument integrations, system integrations, and integrated add-ons.^[4]

Labbit

Labbit is a molecular diagnostics laboratory information management system (LIMS) built on a non-relational graph database as they "are less likely to need major database restructuring due to the inherent flexibility of their structures and the software applications that use them."^[5] The company adds that "when you use Labbit, your data is stored FAIRly and with full provenance, resulting in richer data sets and more reliable, more accurate insights over time."^[6] However, details about features are limited.

Features

The following feature list(s) is/are derived solely from public, freely-available online information the vendor provides. A lack of a "Y" does not necessarily mean that the product doesn't have that feature. The lack of a "Y" could mean:

the vendor chose to not put relevant feature information online despite its existence in the product.
the vendor chooses to make the feature information available only to those who create an account or call/e-mail.
the feature information exists online to the public, but a URL could not be found to cite the existence of the feature.
the feature does not exist for the product.

A vendor's product may receive more confirmed features with the addition of more public information to the vendor's site and/or by providing a URL to a page or document that can act as a citation for the existence of the feature. Prospective buyers are highly recommended to contact the vendor directly to verify features as this list isn't authoritative, and product upgrades and changes happen rapidly in some cases.

Product: Labbit

Sample, inventory, and data management
Sample login and management?	Y^[7]
Sample tracking?
Sample and/or result batching?
Task and event scheduling?
Option for manual result entry?
Multiple data viewing methods?
Data and trend analysis?
Data and equipment sharing?
Customizable fields and/or interface?
Query capability?
Import data?
Internal file or data linking?
External file or data linking?
ELN support or integration?
Export data to MS Excel?
Raw data management?
Data warehouse?
Deadline control?
Production control?
Project and/or task management?
Inventory management?	Y^[7]
Document creation and/or management?
Case management?
Workflow management?	Y^[7]
Specification management?
Customer and supplier management?
Billing management?
Quality, security, and compliance
Regulatory compliance?
QA / QC functions?
Performance evaluation?
Audit trail?
Chain of custody?
Configurable roles and security?
Data normalization?
Data validation?
Data encryption?
Version control?
Automatic data backup?	Y^[7]
Environmental monitoring?
Reporting, barcoding, and printing
Custom reporting?
Report printing?
Label support?
Barcode support?
Export to PDF?
Export to MS Word?
Export to HTML and/or XML?
Fax integration?
Email integration?
Base functionality
Administrator management?
Modular?
Instrument interfacing and management?
Mobile device integration?
Alarms and/or alerts?
Work-related time tracking?
Voice recognition system?
External monitoring?
Messaging?
Multilingual?
Network-capable?
Web client or portal?
Online or integrated help?
Software as a service delivery model?	Y^[7]
Usage-based cost?
Industries served
molecular diagnostics