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A key part of the food chain

Like most countries and economic communities, the European Union (EU) has exacting standards for the traceability of its food chain, especially regarding animal identification and health.

The Regional Association of Animal Health and Identification (ARSIA) in Wallonia, Belgium, is a certified nonprofit cooperative that helps bovine and other animal farmers and veterinarians across southern French-speaking Belgium align with European animal identification and traceability norms to prevent and fight animal disease.

As a vital aspect of the food chain, ARSIA manages the laboratory side of things – completing standard tests and running general laboratory work. They also help when additional examinations and studies are required for possible disease outbreaks. This enables them to protect animal and herd health and food chain quality, complete important administrative tasks and trace the health status of the Wallonian bovine population. This is no small task in this populous farming region in northern Europe.

“Generally speaking, we receive blood samples from veterinarians’ regular farm visits, register the samples according to the animal’s ear tag identification and European health and safety procedures, complete the analysis and send back the test results to the veterinarian,” explains Cédric Mullender, lab manager at ARSIA. “This is our basic work. We can also handle batch work, more complicated analysis and blood workups and other types of samples, notably cadavers for analysis.

“The ARSIA lab counts on Siemens Digital Industries Software’s Opcenter RD&L for all our traceability, administrative and organizational processes.”

With Opcenter™ Research, Development and Laboratory (RD&L) software, which is part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services, each job is tracked and traced from the source using the registered animal ear tag number. ARSIA receives the samples from the veterinarian, and they are registered as a “one request file,” which can contain data covering one or more samples, all the administrative information and additional analysis requirements. This could include herd sample selection, amounts and types of analysis requests.

Small yet complex

Even in a small region like Wallonia, the analysis is highly complex. Teams from ARSIA collect blood samples from over 80 veterinarians and pick up an average of 21 cadavers for postmortem analysis daily, which does not include the mandatory blood samples from newborns.

“We receive a huge number of samples every day – around 3,700 grouped in 800 requests,” says Mullender. “Most of these requests, about 580 files, are already in an automated sample flow, but this volume still generates a huge amount of lab analyses and files to track. “For more specific work, we can set up additional flows and processes in Opcenter RD&L. I’ve written some myself. Of course, we can check for accuracy manually, but when we see a mainstream flow developing with systematized data, we try to automate it.”

© Didier Vanmollekot

Streamlining the data flow

The 3,700 samples a day is even more impressive when you realize the ARSIA lab team numbers between 11 and 15 people who register information depending on the analysis period. Today, the data flow is highly automated and runs rapidly and smoothly.

“Our digital transformation with Opcenter RD&L has been life changing for our lab techs,” says Mullender. “Our tool is extremely fast, yet familiar and easy to use. Our lab techs have everything they need right in front of them.”

The road to a successful rollout

But this wasn’t always the case. For years, ARSIA and its members ran all types of software programs to manage the different sample flows.

“Over the years, we narrowed our laboratory information management systems to four and then two, but we knew we needed a single software solution that would be highly flexible and able to handle future complexity and new data flows,” says Mullender.

The ARSIA wish list

Even with a single solution ARSIA knew it would be an even better investment if the software could be extended to integrate more processes with additional flexibility.

“When we started the integration project with Opcenter RD&L, we were impressed by the local development support we got from the Siemens team,” states Mullender.

“We had a fair amount of customization on our list. We wanted a universal interface to easily integrate tools and data streams. We needed a dependable test report system and a complete billing system that was integrated into the entire process. It was a long and tough list and having a team of competent developers here in Belgium made this happen; it made the entire project a success.”

Mullender and his team realized customized process improvements, like plate management, would save time and operational costs while they were migrating to the Opcenter RD&L system.

“The plate management feature automatically organizes all the samples into the respective lab rack according to analysis type and context,” explains Mullender. “This saves a tremendous amount of lab technician time because it places a series of samples according to specific analyses and context into a group.”

Quick responses to tough questions

“Siemens has always made sure that issues were resolved,” says Mullender. “Support was there when we needed it, so we had the lab machines up and running on time. We worked with competent people who understood our needs.

“We have worked with Siemen for several years and this experience has given us confidence in them. They have the trust of their customers. I think this is one of the most important points when it comes to working with Siemens.”

Always up to date

Today, the team and techs aren’t sitting around waiting for data, dealing with messy backlogs or trying to get computer programs to talk to each other.

“We’re always up to date,” says Mullender. “It is all traceable, auditable and automated. We know how to track everything. It saves a lot of time. We’re making the most of what Opcenter RD&L has to offer.”

The ARSIA team is especially proud of the customized universal interface they use to integrate critical data from outside applications, such as scheduling visits.

“The universal interface lets us easily create connections,” says Mullender. “I know how to do it and I am not a computer scientist. We’re pretty good at getting the data we need where we need it on our own. As a lab manager, it is what I wanted in a system: I wanted us to be autonomous.

”To get up to speed, we also invested in high-performance machines. Investing in the right equipment to run Opcenter RD&L has made a huge difference. Now it’s extremely fast.

“When it comes to test reports, things just run like clockwork. The crux of the problem was hardware performance. At the start, it took a few hours to send around 40 results. With our Opcenter RD&L system finely tuned and running on the right hardware setting, it takes 10 minutes. It’s easy to save an enormous amount of time.”

Ready for complex lab work

Now that the Opcenter RD&L system is in place, the team is using it for more complex lab exploratory analysis work like bacteriology that requires collecting data on evolving sample cultures.

“With Opcenter RD&L, we’ve managed to model this with 50 or so methods and parameters,” says Mullender. “Even with all the complexity, we’ve created a tool that’s flexible and performs well enough for bacteriology work.

“That’s the beauty of Opcenter RD&L. If you start with the right parameters and information, Opcenter RD&L helps people make the right choices from a huge selection of items. All you do is follow the steps, make your choice and it works.”

The bigger food chain picture

Government bodies must have the means to act quickly and control outbreaks of diseases that can harm individual animals, animal populations, farmers and the overall economy, including the health and welfare of the general population.

In case of an outbreak, it is crucial to know where the animals were kept, where the outbreak originated, where the animal went and where the disease transmission likely took place.

“This is why the traceability data we keep in Opcenter RD&L is so vital,” explains Mullender. “We will continue to use it to cover more monitoring and technical parameters until we cover everything. We have confidence in Opcenter RD&L because we can see in detail who did what and we can always find the data that we need quickly and easily.

“In the future, all our government procedures and LIMS processes will be going mobile and thanks to our working relationship with Siemens, we’ll be ready.”