The facility that utilizes these frozen samples researches and produces clinical treatments for human patients. The inventory is in constant use with samples being added and requested for research and clinical use. Users of the system require a 1 to 24 hour turnaround time for clinical samples and within a 5 day window for research materials. Unchecked errors in the system could have lethal effects, and a great deal of effort is exerted to ensure that no such errors go undiscovered prior to materials being used. The fidelity requirement and year round use of the inventory precludes making changes that interrupt service.
Providing continuity of service while implementing a new system required an implementation that was either parallel, incremental, or otherwise moving in step with the existing system. Previous improvement efforts did not succeed due to a combination of technical aspects, the biological complexities of the samples, the process requirements, and complexity of use for the personnel. While the majority of the affair was that of information technology, the other facets of such an undertaking were vital. The biological details that needed to be considered were sufficiently nuanced that they were beyond the scope of many of the technologically skilled. Conversely, the technical aspects of the system were not obvious to those accustomed to biological work and required explanation in language understandable by scientists.
A palatable mixture of simplicity, usability, utility, and extensibility was a tall order. Extending too far or falling short with any of these attributes rendered previous attempts useless for scientific data collection, sample retrieval, sample information entry, or generation of summary reports. Prior attempts tried systems dependent on MS Access, multiple hyper-linked files, and proprietary software suites targeted to laboratories. A solution with a viable balance of characteristics was hard to come by in an off the shelf product.
The scope and scale of prior upgrade projects were likely the primary contributors to their collapse. Attempting to tackle the entire inventory system all at once including the migration of all existing data and procedures was just too massive an undertaking. The force of a thousand tiny details that had to be accommodated by any new framework provided a great deal of resistance to forward progress.
