Scientists usually share information with collaborators from all around the world. For that purpose, eyeOS (www.eyeos.org) provides an invaluable system to access and share documents, create and save data files or store crucial personal and professional information.
To see eyeOS widely used by scientists all around the world, we initiated the eyeLIMS project ! eyeLIMS is a community-driven project which aims at providing a Free, web-based, Open Source Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) powered by eyeOS.
The eyeLIMS community will develop new eyeOS applications or port to eyeOS existing free open source applications specifically dedicated to molecular and cellular biology. As eyeOS is based on PHP, XML and javascript, it represents a perfect environment to integrate existing open source projects.
The eyeLIMS Software Suite will include a set of eyeOS applications dedicated to common activities in research laboratories such as managing samples or reagents (eyeStorage), managing bibliographic references (eyeBiblio) or manipulating data (eyeJmol).
The whole project is Free and Open Source and will be released under GNU Affero GPL v.3 license.
Please feel free to join, ask question, share ideas at: www.eyelims.com and on the dedicated forum at: http://forums.eyeos.org/index.php?board=27.0&Itemid=110
PS: eyeLIMS is looking for developers. Feel free to join us !
Comments
User-friendly, High compatibility but low requirements
Hi Neil,
And thanks for your interest in the project. I fixed the mistake in "invaluable".
I also completely agree on the facts that:
- we need a free open source Laboratory Information Management System
- to be adopted, it needs to be user-friendly, cross-platform, highly compatible with existing open source solutions.
I had that in mind when I joined the eyeOS team, three years ago and I always kept it in mind during eyeOS development. And it is because eyeOS fits these needs that I really think it provides the perfect platform for a LIMS:
- For users, eyeOS provides a really intuitive and user-friendly desktop-like environment, accessible from anywhere.
- For developers, eyeOS provides a complete Toolkit and set of libraries to easily and quickly develop new eyeOS applications.
- For network manager, eyeOS has very low requirements. It only needs PHP and XML (javascript being provided by the navigator). It does NOT require a MySQL (or other) database or a Java server (such as Tomcat). For this reason, it can be installed on any basic hosting plan. However, it allows the easy integration of Flash (swf), Java applets or MySQL applications. Importantly, it constitutes a secured platform to store and share documents with a Virtual File System controlling the user access to files.
To conclude, the last but not the least, eyeOS is Free and Open Source. To my knowledge, it is unique.
I hope you will take time to discover this platform and agree with me on its potential.
Best regards,
Alexandre
www.eyeLIMS.com - Free Open Source Laboratory Information Management System powered by eyeOS
Value
provides an unvaluable system
*Invaluable*, surely. I hope?
I'll be interested to see how this develops: the research world is in desperate need of a quality, open-source LIMS. However, I'm concerned that this LIMS is tied to an existing product. Everyone has a web browser, but not everyone will want to sign up for eyeOS and learn how to use it. A true web application is something more like Google Documents, where you just open a page and start work.
Remember, biologists will look for any excuse not to learn how to use an application; you need to keep the entry barrier as low as possible.