Why FileMaker is a Smart, Scalable Choice for Labs in 2025

Ben Fletcher • 22 May 2025


Why Claris FileMaker is a Smart, Scalable Choice for Laboratory Information Management Systems in 2025


Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) are essential tools for tracking workflow, managing data, and meeting regulatory requirements in clinical, research, and diagnostic labs. But as labs face growing demands for adaptability, tighter budgets, and stricter data governance, the limitations of many off-the-shelf LIMS platforms are becoming increasingly clear.


In 2025, the FileMaker platform offers an agile, cost-effective alternative to traditional LIMS software—tailored for laboratories that require flexibility, security, and customisation.



The Cost Challenge: Why Traditional LIMS Can Be Prohibitively Expensive


Commercial LIMS solutions—especially those sold as SaaS—typically cost between £50-£100 per user per month, with perpetual licences typically being several thousand pounds per user. These high costs often reflect specialist features, but they also lock labs into rigid platforms that are slow to evolve with changing requirements.


By contrast, Claris  FileMaker licensing starts at around £14.25 per user per month, offering a customisable foundation at a fraction of the price.



Why FileMaker Makes Sense for LIMS in 2025



🔧 Built for Customisation


Claris FileMaker doesn’t come with pre-baked LIMS functionality—but that’s its strength. Almost all labs need tailored workflows and integrations, which means off-the-shelf solutions often require costly customisation anyway. Claris FileMaker provides a faster, more agile foundation for bespoke LIMS development.



🌐 Designed for Mixed Tech Environments


Modern labs are rarely standardised. It’s common to find a mix of Windows, macOS, Linux, and mobile devices alongside biomedical instruments. FileMaker thrives in these environments with native apps for macOS, Windows, and iOS, plus web-based access for Android and Linux via WebDirect.



🔐 Meets Stringent Data Governance Requirements


Many labs—especially those in healthcare and academia—must comply with strict data storage and privacy regulations. Unlike cloud-only SaaS tools, FileMaker can be deployed:



This deployment flexibility ensures compliance while maintaining performance and scalability.



🔄 Integration and Data Exchange Capabilities


LIMS solutions need to interface with a wide variety of external systems and diagnostic equipment. FileMaker supports:


  • Data imports/exports via CSV, Excel, XML, JSON
  • Integration with ODBC and REST APIs
  • Messaging and protocol handling (e.g., HL7) for medical data transmission.


It also includes robust text parsing tools—ideal for transforming structured medical data like Electronic Patient Requests (EPRs) into actionable formats for lab workflows.  Additionally, FileMaker's sister product Claris Connect allows for rapid integration and automation with common web services such as AWS, Office 365, Dropbox and dozens of other popular services.  You can even leverage local AI Large Language models if the data is too sensitive to be exposed to public AI cloud services.


🖼 Excellent for Visual and Image Data


FileMaker handles rich media (including high-res images) exceptionally well, making it ideal for labs that rely on image data alongside traditional numerical test results, and allowing for combined reports to be generated seemlessly.



⚙️ Built for Rapid Development


Whether you need to onboard a new test method, update compliance outputs, or integrate a new instrument, Claris FileMaker lets developers (and even technically-minded lab staff) make changes quickly and safely. This adaptability is invaluable in fast-evolving clinical and research settings. 



Real Benefits for Real Labs


In 2025, speed and adaptability are just as important as features. FileMaker gives you both. You’re not locked into long development cycles or expensive vendor support contracts—you’re in control of a system that evolves as your laboratory does.



Still Deciding if FileMaker Is Right for Your LIMS?


As Claris Platinum Partners, DataTherapy has delivered custom LIMS and clinical information solutions for clients across the NHS. Whether you need help with design, development, hosting, or regulatory compliance, our expert team is ready to support you.


Contact us today for a free consultation and no-obligation quote.

by Ben Fletcher 10 June 2026
Upgrade to Claris FileMaker 2026 with confidence. Learn key migration considerations, AI features, compatibility issues and best practices.
by Ben Fletcher 10 June 2026
FileMaker Server 26 Enhancements Multiple SASE Processes - FileMaker Server 26 allows you to configure the number of active process in the Server Side Script Engine (SASE), the upper limit being determined by the hardware in use. This allows for more server side processes to occur in parallel - for automated imports, sync and nightly data transformations which need high throughput. Auto-Restart - FileMaker Server's Web Publishing Engine (WPE), OData and Data API services now monitor and detect abnormal termination events and restart automatically on a crash. Export Field Contents on Server - No additional 3rd party plugins or work arounds to automate server side document generation and export to server side folders. FileMaker Go 26 for iOS Enhancements Additional support for iOS hardware and locale support. Core Platform Security Enhancements Additional corporate security enhanced with support for OpenSSL 3.5 LTS, Apache Tomcat 10.1.44+, Windows Server 2025 certification, and full macOS 2026 compatibility. Need help to upgrade to FileMaker 26? At DataTherapy, we specialise in supporting and upgrading legacy FileMaker apps as well as building new custom apps to leverage the latest features of the Claris FileMaker 26 platform. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help. ✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers ✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals ✅ Platinum Claris Partner ✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker 📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
by Ben Fletcher 10 June 2026
As well as the customer facing UI enhancements, FileMaker 26 has a number of 'under the hood' tool enhancements for long standing developers: Enhanced Inspector - layout controls dynamically adjust based on the object type, reading the cognitive load of navigating the Layout Mode tools for new and veteran developers alike. Control Field Entry by Calculation - field level editablity is now controlled by a boolean calculation that evaluates at runtime based on any developer defined logic. This makes building role based editing or workflow based record locking much easier to implement. Sort Custom Functions with Folders - this now is applied at an independent folder level, making it much easier to work with distributing a shared function library that needs to display in a specific order. Set Layout Zoom by Calculation - the UI zoom can now be scripted to any decimal percentage, making it easier to make layouts which adapt to a specific user or device screen size requirements. Draco Catalog - FileMaker 2026 now includes a persistent catalog which is independent from the application data which can be used for storing JavaScript modules and persistent solution-level settings (app versions, feature flags and environment identifiers). PDF Script Workspace - dedicated script steps have been added for PDF manipulation which makes the generation of multi-page reports assembled from different layouts both using FileMaker Pro client and via FileMaker Server. Need help to upgrade to FileMaker 26? At DataTherapy, we specialise in supporting and upgrading legacy FileMaker apps as well as building new custom apps to leverage the latest features of the Claris FileMaker 26 platform. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help. ✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers ✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals ✅ Platinum Claris Partner ✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker 📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
by Ben Fletcher 10 June 2026
FileMaker 2025 already added significant enhancements to leverage AI and FileMaker 26 continues to double down on this: Field Annotation A new AI tab is available within the Field Options to define a JSON calculation as the field's annotation which is used in Export dialogs, sort dialogs and most essential in Data Definition Language (DDL) for use in AI. Save as XML & Solution Upgrade Tool FileMaker Pro 26 can now save a copy of your solution as a .xml formatted text file and the enhanced Solution Upgrade Tool can now read XML input and create brand new .fmp12 files or patch existing ones. This is a huge boon for Claris FileMaker developers - it means that Claris FileMaker developers can now use AI tools to generate XML which can then be used to create real production ready FileMaker solutions. Additionally, traditional version controlling scheme and using diff tools to compare XML outputs between production and development releases can be compared. Google Gemini Support Gemini is now supported as a native option in FileMaker script steps making it substantially easier to integrate with Google Cloud and Gemini if that is your preferred AI backend provider. PDF Text Extraction The native ExtractTextfromPDF() function introduced in FileMaker 2025, can now be used to process OCR (scanned) PDFs and not just text-layer PDFs. This again reduces the reliance and cost of using additional 3rd party plugins, APIs or AI tools for text extraction. Need help to upgrade to FileMaker 26? At DataTherapy, we specialise in supporting and upgrading legacy FileMaker apps as well as building new custom apps to leverage the latest AI features of the Claris FileMaker 26 platform. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help. ✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers ✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals ✅ Platinum Claris Partner ✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker 📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
by Ben Fletcher 10 June 2026
The new Claris FileMaker 2026 release includes enhancements to user experience and accessibility: WebDirect Accessibility & Platform updates WebDirect now includes better screen reader support for the visually impaired or motor disabilities: semantic HTML is now correctly labelled and there is improved focus management for modal dialogs, portals and pop-ups. This is a critical requirement for any public-facing WebDirect solutions where accessibility is a legal obligation. WebDirect in FileMaker 2026 now runs on JDK 21 - removing a barrier to corporate environments that have strict or have deprecated older versions of JDK in their infrastructure. Japanese Calendar Support Native Japanese era-based (gengō) calendar system support has been added in FileMaker 2026— drop-down date pickers now display and accept dates in the Japanese calendar across all. This is critical to Japanese solutions where there s a legal mandate for governmental and official documents to use era-based dating. Need help to upgrade to FileMaker 2026? At DataTherapy, we specialise in supporting and upgrading legacy FileMaker apps as well as building new custom apps to leverage the latest features of the Claris FileMaker 26 platform. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help. ✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers ✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals ✅ Platinum Claris Partner ✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker 📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
by Ben Fletcher 10 June 2026
The new Claris FileMaker 2026 release includes two highly significant enhancements to business continuity and disaster recovery: FileMaker Standby Server FileMaker Server 2026 can be paired with a second 'hot spare' server which is always ready to become the primary, with failover only taking a few minutes to implement. This means that a hardware failure of the primary server server can be quickly recovered from by promoting the secondary server. Previously, synchronising data between a primary and fail over server would have required additional software adding complexity and cost to a FileMaker Server deployment. FileMaker Server 2026 now includes this service as standard, making it much more economic to implement. The fail over server does not have to be running on the same OS platform or network and so you can run a hybrid on-premises + cloud or split across different cloud data centres or providers for added robustness. FileMaker Server Remote Backup Claris now offer a cloud storage backup service integrated directly with FileMaker Server which can be bolted onto existing FileMaker Server installations (on-premises or running on private cloud). While many private managed hosting providers such as DataTherapy have implemented cloud backups as part of their standard service, FileMaker customers with on-premises infrastructure would often struggle to implement robust backup solutions without dedicated virtualisation teams and additional 3rd party backup software. Again, this provides an economic option for FileMaker customers to consider as part of their disaster recovery strategy. Need help to upgrade to FileMaker 2026? At DataTherapy, we specialise in supporting and upgrading legacy FileMaker apps as well as building new custom apps to leverage the latest features of the Claris FileMaker 2026 platform. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help. ✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers ✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals ✅ Platinum Claris Partner ✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker 📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
by Ben Fletcher 10 June 2026
Upgrade to Claris FileMaker 2026 now! DataTherapy are pleased to announce that Claris FileMaker 2026 managed private cloud hosting packages are immediately available on both Windows and Linux platforms via FileMaker Host . DataTherapy can provide scalable, managed FileMaker packages for businesses of all size. Full details of all of our packages can be found here . Why choose DataTherapy for Claris FileMaker Hosting? Hassle-Free Hosting We handle everything – from setup to ongoing maintenance, so you can focus on your business, not server management. Personalised UK-Based Support Speak to real FileMaker experts, not call centres. All our servers are fully managed by our in-house team. Secure, High Performance Infrastructure Our hosting is fine-tuned for optimal database performance and is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Our servers are scalable, provide enterprise-grade security, and we handle backups to keep your data safe. No Long-Term Contracts Flexible quarterly billing options with a free 2-week trial for maximum flexibility without long-term commitments. Fully Customised Hosting Tailored for your Business We understand FileMaker inside out. Whether you’re running a small business system or a large enterprise solution we can provide the perfect plan based on your user and performance needs. If you need additional information, or would like to arrange a free trial of any of our packages then please don’t hesitate to contact our team .
by Ben Fletcher 10 June 2026
What is new in FileMaker 26? The Claris FileMaker 26 (version 26 - they have officially skipped versions 23-25 so that the version number aligns with the year of release ) Platform for is now available as of 10th June 2026 and demonstrates Claris’ on-going commitment to embrace transformative technologies. Whether you’re a long-time FileMaker user or just exploring how to modernise your internal systems, this latest release includes expanded AI capabilities including Google Gemini support, major server reliability improvements, and significant accessibility advances. Here’s what you need to know: AI capabilities Google Gemini support: Adds Gemini to FileMaker's growing list of supported AI providers, giving developers greater flexibility when building intelligent applications. Field and table annotations: Attach semantic meaning to fields and tables so AI models have richer context — improving the accuracy of natural language queries and LLM-generated insights. Metadata calculation functions: New functions including BaseTableComment and FieldAnnotation provide programmatic access to schema documentation, making AI-powered solutions easier to build and maintain entirely within FileMaker. Server reliability and infrastructure Automatic crash recovery: The Web Publishing Engine, OData service, and Data API now restart themselves after interruptions — reducing downtime without manual intervention. Multiple SASE processes: Support for multiple Server-Side Script Engine processes improves throughput and responsiveness under heavy workloads. Updated platform compatibility: Full support for macOS 26, Windows Server 2025, OpenSSL 3.5 LTS, and Apache Tomcat 10.1.44+ ensures deployments stay secure and supported in modern IT environments. Accessibility WebDirect improvements: Updated semantic HTML, improved screen reader compatibility, better focus management, and ARIA compliance — a significant step toward WCAG 2.1 compliance. No redesign required: Existing layouts benefit from accessibility improvements automatically, lowering the barrier for partners serving clients with compliance requirements. What benefits doe this bring to new and existing FileMaker customers? Build and deliver faster — A smarter development environment with context-aware tooling and scripting improvements means less time on layout friction and more time building solutions our clients love. Lead with AI — Google Gemini support, field annotations, and native metadata functions give us the tools to build genuinely intelligent apps — without third-party platforms or custom integrations. Reduce client downtime — Automatic service recovery means enterprise deployments keep running even when issues arise. Serve every user — Built-in accessibility improvements help clients meet WCAG 2.1 and Section 508 requirements, opening doors to new government, healthcare, and enterprise customers. Grow with a future-ready platform — Compatibility with the latest operating systems, security standards, and AI providers means the solutions we build today are designed to last. Ready to upgrade your business to FileMaker 26? The new benefits of FileMaker 26 mean you can layer power AI into existing solutions without any major redevelopment work. Support for natural language input allow smarter and more intuitive applications to improve your business decision making. At DataTherapy , we specialise in building custom apps for business using the Claris FileMaker platform. Whether you need training, support, cloud hosting or are ready to go all-in on developing a new app from scratch—we can help. ✅ Certified Claris FileMaker Developers ✅ UK-based team of full-time professionals ✅ Platinum Claris Partner ✅ Experts in secure, on-premise and private cloud deployment of FileMaker 📞 Contact us today for a free consultation and discover how local FileMaker can help your team move faster, work smarter, and stay fully in control of your data.
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by Ben Fletcher 1 May 2026
Rosemary Tietge (Claris Community Engagement Manager) was kind enough to invite me to be a panelist on Community Live 45: Level up your FileMaker email game . This was off the back of our past blog post covering this topic . We were also joined by the highly knowledgeable David Sullivan of Mandelbrot LLC .
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by Ben Fletcher 25 March 2026
We look at the latest FileMaker 2025 (20.0.6) security fixes.
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