A number of laboratory inventory management systems (LIMS) are available, but nearly all are commercial, with user data monetized and used to support ongoing development and operation. This presents some opportunities for supply companies, but also privacy concerns for research groups.
The current and forseeable research environment is extremely competitive, and the use of LIMS provides advantages in operational efficiency that allow scientists and staff to focus on their research work instead of maintaining shared spreadsheet and paper records.
This project, 'interstitial,' is intended to be an open-source LIMS developed in Python using the Django framework. Given the popularity of Python in biomedical and data science, this should keep the source code accessible to a large part of the scientific community, lowering the barrier to entry and ensuring longevity of the project.
Pushed 'interstitial' project to git. Collected static content, created data base. Started development with 'institutions' app/model.
App secret and database configuration files in user home directory, ~/project_secrets/ in *.txt and *.cnf files.