Case LOLA – LIMS – presented by the drama group of the Finnish Forensic Laboratory  

A humanly sad, but still heroic story elevated after some sparkling refreshments during the first evening of the Nordic LIMS conference. A case study about the application LOLA-LIMS (delivered by Software Point) role in vanquishing a young drug dealer was dramatically presented by the Forensic Laboratory drama group. In addition to the LOLA – LIMS system, PATJA for requests and ASPO for electronic archiving was used to save the conference from this young and cruel criminal.

Entering the scene with a “bang”, the drug dealer was eager to sell some of his goods to the audience. After limited success someone must have called the police, who were able to chase him down pretty fast with only a few jumps in between the seats in the big auditorium. The criminal was arrested and he and the crime scene could soon be carefully investigated (with rubber gloves). Samples were taken from his mouth along with fingerprints and of course the drugs that he had on him when he was arrested. Since this was a very urgent case (the conference dinner was soon to be served), the policeman used PATJA to send an urgent marked request to the LOLA – LIMS system.

Dr. Kaisa and her staff at the forensic lab were just about to prepare their work for the evening when they, through the LOLA – LIMS system, got the request. Since it was marked as urgent they immediately started their work to analyze fingerprints, drugs and the DNA taken from the mouth.

The LOLA-LIMS guided Dr. Kaisa with staff through every step in the analysis process. The fingerprints were carefully analyzed and matched. Soon could a statement be sent back to the police. The drug material taken from the dealer was cautiously put into the “drug identification instrument” and the results were automatically imported into the LOLA – LIMS. The DNA analysis process was a bit more complicated, but the staff at the lab was well prepared and had a solid experience in LOLA – LIMS. The exhibits were automatically identified through barcodes and the analysis could start, all guided by LIMS. After completing the complex DNA analysis the final statement could be reported back to the PATJA system.

At the police station, the officer just poured up some coffee and started to check if there were new laboratory results on any of his cases. And, yes, there were - the LOLA-LIMS reported that the exhibits from the drug dealer analysis were finalized. He printed out the report that in simple words stated “Guilty of charge” and the criminal could be placed behind bars for a long, long time.
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With the drug dealer in safe custody, the exhibit material could after some time be put into the long term storage. Everything was handled automatically using the LOLA – LIMS and all the steps were of course completely traceable through the audit trail module.

During the annual inspection by FINAS, the manager at the forensic laboratory felt proud of his staff and the seamless IT infrastructure he was responsible for. Eager to give the staff special credits for their good work during the year, he spontaneously said: “Carry on the good work”.


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Photos by Peter Streng



 
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