Alliance with Microsoft for software developments

Following SampleManager LIMS, the Thermo Fisher flagship product for the process industries, supported on the SQL server, Thermo will develop further software solutions on a Microsoft platform

Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world leader in serving science, has announced that it has established a working relationship with Microsoft aimed at developing next-generation laboratory knowledge management solutions designed to move science forward at an accelerated rate.

The products will be built on a Microsoft technology platform.

Thermo Fisher has unparalleled laboratory informatics experience, deep industry knowledge and world-class software development expertise: this coupled with Microsoft scaleable, secure and flexible open standards technologies, will allow the development of easy-to-use software tools that increase laboratory productivity with less risk and a superior user experience.

"We're encouraged that Thermo Fisher Scientific will build its next-generation application on a Microsoft technology platform," said Paul Mattes, a life sciences industry solutions director at Microsoft.

"Ultimately, this will benefit life sciences customers." Thermo Fisher has already developed Darwin LIMS, its purpose-built laboratory information management system (LIMS) for pharmaceutical manufacturing R and D and QA/QC, on the Microsoft.NET platform.

In addition, SampleManager LIMS, the Thermo Fisher flagship product for the process industries, is now supported on the SQL server, providing customers with a choice of databases.

Last month, Thermo Fisher announced that it is more committed than ever to support the open XML standards for data exchange as a member of the Microsoft Bio-IT Alliance.

The alliance unites leaders in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, hardware and software industries to explore new ways of sharing complex biomedical data and collaborate among multidisciplinary teams to ultimately speed the pace of drug discovery and development.

The two companies are working together to continue to provide customers with end-to-end solutions for data acquisition storage and analysis.

Thermo Fisher is now working on a new Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) solution that will be based on the Microsoft.Net 3.0 Framework.

ELNs, as a category, are designed to replace the paper notebooks in which scientists and researchers record extensive notes resulting from their experiments and processes.

In addition to collaborating with their colleagues, scientists will use the ELN to access unstructured research and reference information as well as the structured laboratory testing information that resides in LIMS and chromatography data systems (CDS).

"This is an exciting time for customers who are anxious to break down data silos and electronically capture information generated in the laboratory to give that data meaningful context for more effective decision-making and knowledge management," said Dave Champagne, vice president and general manager of informatics for Thermo Fisher: "Our collaboration with Microsoft provides us with best-in-class technologies and tools to build enterprise-wide solutions that address the entire value chain in our customers.

They can now aggregate both structured and unstructured data to look for relationships and trends that enrich their knowledge and understanding".

Thermo Fisher Scientific and Microsoft have responded to customer needs to develop solutions that bring a whole new level of functionality and interoperability to the marketplace.

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