Knowledge-Age Company Joins Knowledge-Age Trade Association in Boosting Electronic Recordkeeping Productivity

CENSA, The Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems Association, welcomes LabSystems as its newest member

Medford, MA., - Today LabSystems, the world's largest Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) vendor, joined CENSA in their collaborative efforts to envision and develop the R&D-related electronic recordkeeping software of the future. LabSystems' 250 employees bring to CENSA their expertise in the areas of LIMS, chromatography data systems, and instrument integration. Like other CENSA members, LabSystems' participation in CENSA will enable them to leverage their considerable knowledge and skills.

CENSA, a four-year-old global trade association, counts as members many of the world's largest research and development companies in the life sciences, chemical, healthcare, high technology, consumer products, and related industries. CENSA members are designing, developing, and implementing completely electronic recordkeeping systems that take research and product development recordkeeping activities from unwieldy and unreliable paper-based systems to electronic systems that support and drive innovation. CENSA end user companies operate in patent-sensitive and regulated environments that demand highly reliable recordkeeping and archiving systems. Within CENSA, members with common interests are united in project-focused work teams. Each member company contributes considerable time from technically skilled employees in order to develop high-value user-designed specified systems.

A Very sophisticated corporate LIMS solution available today

"LabSystems' LIMS technology is in use at 750 sites around the globe. That's more than 15,000 individual users," notes Rich Lysakowski, Ph.D., and Executive Director of CENSA. "SampleManager unifies the laboratory, the process plant, and corporate desktop. It provides the missing link between the quality control lab and the manufacturing plant, and between the R&D operation and the analytical sciences lab," he added. "It's a very sophisticated corporate LIMS solution, as are LabSystems' Nautilus LIMS and Atlas chromatography data system. We are delighted to have LabSystems as a CENSA member."

"As a CENSA supplier member, LabSystems will gain many benefits," continued Lysakowski, "including priority access to our corporate end users and their automation system development projects; system and component specifications and other knowledge deliverables; sponsorship of specifications for adoption; receipt of CENSA RFPs; and participation in our certification and quality branding programs." CENSA periodically releases RFPs and functional specifications for advanced automation systems and tools for R&D.

Complex buyer needs, powerful solutions

The problems that the CENSA membership are solving are significant. As the information age speeds ahead, legacy LIMS data systems and associated recordkeeping support systems are falling farther and farther behind. Often, underlying technology becomes a significant drag on productivity. While software currently on the market performs many valuable functions, it does not satisfy the complex requirements of scientists, patent attorneys, librarians, and managers of R&D, automation, regulatory affairs, quality assurance, and electronic archives -- all of whom seek tailored, sophisticated systems for intelligent project data handling, collaboration and recordkeeping.

Collaboration provides solutions in months, not years

More and more companies are recognizing the need for such software. CENSA brings together suppliers and end users to create solutions that are flexible, reliable, secure, and are tailored to the specific industry and task. CENSA members -- with thousands of person-years of technical skills, business understanding, and government agency experience -- work together to develop satisfactory solutions. CENSA member goals include: enabling globally distributed teams to work together easily and securely; building modular products that are broadly used; developing the most effective compliance procedures and tools; and providing solutions in months, not years.

LabSystems' products and expertise will expand CENSA's offerings to end users

"LabSystems' experience, products, and product development style beautifully fit with our membership," stated Lysakowski. "They share our strong commitment to reducing the time it takes to get products to market and to increasing the rate at which products become success stories. And like CENSA, LabSystems and its customers have been highly successful in using a team approach to solving complex product development challenges."

Gordon Logan, Managing Director at LabSystems, noted, "The goal is simple: to provide end users with the best possible products to meet their needs. To achieve this, however, requires a great deal of consultation and cooperation. Recognizing that the customer is as much a part of the team as the LabSystems engineers, and contributes as much to the development process, is of paramount importance. Both CENSA and LabSystems understand what more and more buyers and sellers of complex software are coming to see: shared experience and expertise is the most rigorous and reliable way to develop high-value software that speeds the sharing, reuse, and archiving of critical and proprietary research data, and accelerates laboratory and R&D projects."

LabSystems understands the value of teamwork

LabSystems brings their own collaborative, hands-on development experience to CENSA. Five pharmaceutical companies worked jointly with LabSystems to develop Atlas, a multi-channel, multi-user chromatography data system. LabSystems included chromatographers throughout the development process: at Glaxo Wellcome alone, more than 20 employees were involved.

LabSystems' third major product, Nautilus, has established new standards for rapid delivery of LIMS functionality to the laboratory. 'Ready-to-run' (straight out of the box) and easily configured, the system can be mapped right onto the laboratory workflow. That means no coding and no IT specialists are required.

CENSA is a market development association whose membership represents more than 600,000 employees in firms that span the globe. Every end user firm operates in industries where satisfying regulatory and patent requirements are critical to success. CENSA is currently recruiting End User Members and Supplier Members to participate in the R&D automation market development programs.

LabSystems is the information management systems division of Thermo BioAnalysis Corporation (ASE:TBA). It provides its customers with local language products, documentation, training courses, support, and services. LabSystems was the world's first laboratory automation company to earn BS EN ISO 9001/TickIT accreditation. It has headquarters in Manchester, U.K. and Beverly, Massachusetts.

For more information, please contact:
 

Richard Lysakowski, Ph.D.
CENSA, Inc.	Thermo LabSystems, Inc.
19 Bowen Avenue, Suite 100	100 Cummings Center, Suite 407J
Medford, MA 02155	Beverly, MA 01915
Tel: (781) 395-3004	Tel: (978) 524-1400
;	info@labsystems.com
www.censa.org	www.labsystems.com