“Clustermarket gave us an all-in-one platform to control and manage the booking of equipment and workspaces. These are used by a large quantity of users from multiple research groups within the University of Leiden in two different core facilities. Additionally, Clustermarket provides us useful data for capacity discussions with the Institute’s management team to justify the expansion of our facilities.”
Lab profile
The Proteomic and Tissue Culture facilities at the Leiden Institute of Chemistry are part of the University of Leiden, Netherlands. These facilities assist researchers from multiple departments who work on different topics related to the biological processes behind human diseases. The departments focus on real-life applications, gathering interest from companies that want to speed up the process of drug development, and also develop new and precise diagnostic methods. These core facilities house a number of instruments including cellular imaging systems from Thermo Fisher Scientific, liquid chromatography and protein purification instruments from Bio-Rad Laboratories and Cytiva, and several PCR thermocyclers from Bio-Rad Laboratories.
- Number of users: 160
- Number of instruments: 62
- Type of lab/facility: Core Facility
- Research area: Proteomics/Tissue culture
- Location: Leiden, Netherlands
- Previous system: Mix of google calendar and paper calendars
Research
Both the Proteomic and Tissue Culture facilities are used by multiple institutes within the university, including the LIC, LACDR, IBL and LION. The research supported by the core facilities is broad, ranging from structural biology, drug development, development of chemical compounds and inhibitors, technique development, and stem cells research. Due to the broad research being done within these facilities, a lot of collaboration between different research fields is established. The facilities act as a central point to share knowledge and support the progress of scientific research.
Problem
The main issue these core facilities had was the existence of multiple different systems for reserving their instruments. With a fragmented booking process and different systems, the equipment access was not being controlled the correct way. Because untrained people were using instruments they should not have access to, the management team saw a surge in the maintenance needed.
Solution
Bringing every instrument to the Clustermarket lab equipment management software allowed the team to replace their outdated and inefficient booking systems with one single platform. The platform now allows more control of equipment, user training and data reporting on instrument usage, all from one single place.
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