QuadraMed(R) Corporation today announced that the company has released Affinity(R) Laboratory, a fully integrated laboratory system. The company's primary marketing will be to acute care hospitals, reference labs, specialty facilities and multi-site healthcare organizations.

Dade Behring, the world's largest company solely dedicated to clinical diagnostics, today announced that its Dimension Vista(TM) 1500 integrated system, which will be the company's first integrated chemistry/ immunochemistry system targeted at high-volume clinical laboratory customers, has received 510(k) clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Florida Department of Environmental Protection

Laboratories that support water treatment plants have long discovered the benefits of Laboratory Information Management Systems - LIMS. Today many laboratories are looking to replace their earlier systems with ones that are easier to support, more friendly to use and that can be connected easily with other plant computer systems. These laboratories as well as new facilities being commissioned can benefit the most by installing a new configuration of the very successful Matrix LIMS product, called ‘Neptune’.

Spectroscopy software is named the 2005 Readers' Choice Award winner for spectroscopy software in an annual survey*, and that Thermo's SampleManager™ laboratory information management system and Atlas™ chromatography data system were finalists in the LIMS and CDS categories. Thermo is the only company with its products nominated in these three categories for 2005.

Driven by Customer Demand, eLearning Enables Customers to Maximize Productivity and Manage Training Costs

CSSC, a regulatory compliance and validation company, expands its global presence by partnering with ADN. CSSC and ADN, both leading providers of regulatory compliance solutions to the life sciences industry, announced today a strategic partnership.

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) today announced the completion of its acquisition of Scientific Software Inc., a leading provider of scientific information management solutions. Agilent and Scientific Software had announced an acquisition agreement on May 25, 2005. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

XDA Tools and Methodologies to be Developed to Improve Speed and Value of Microarray Experiments

Ocimum Biosolutions, a leading provider of Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) and Bioinformatics solutions, today announced that the National Institute for Cellular Biotechnology (NICB), Dublin City University (DCU) has acquired their Biotracker™ LIMS solution to provide a centralized, secure, privilege driven access to researchers working in the Gene Expression and Proteomics groups at DCU.

Diagnostics Products Corporation (NYSE–DP) and Thermo Electron Corporation announced that they have entered into an agreement for the codevelopment of a new, high throughput clinical chemistry platform.

Acquisition will expand Millipore's capabilities in aseptic processing and process monitoring tools

Advanced Chemistry Development, Inc., (ACD/Labs) announces a substantial donation of software to the Environmental Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Centre at the University of Toronto at Scarborough, to facilitate Dr. André Simpson in his research on the structural categories of carbon in the environment.

A fellow consultant recently turned me on to the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is a fascinating look into the philosophy of quality. While the premise of the book (at least I think it is the premise) is that science and art are not entirely inseparable, one of the effects the book had on me was that it made me revisit the "scientific method".

Eventually in the lifecycle of every project someone will look at a piece of custom software and think to themselves, "Is this the right version, or did I put the new version on my other computer?" While it seems silly for a company that likely spent thousands of dollars on analyzing, developing and validating that particular piece of software, this still happens in even with the best companies. Let's look at some ways a company can re-identify a piece of custom code that is textual – meaning that the code is stored in a human entered, and human readable format.

STARLIMS Corporation signs agreement for distribution and support of STARLIMS software in Japan with CTC Laboratory Systems (CTCLS), distributors and system integrators of state-of-the-art computer systems and software. According to Taizo Watanabe, President of CTCLS, "The Japanese market for commercial-off-the-shelf LIMS solutions is expected to grow noticeably in the coming years ... STARLIMS offers cost effective complete solutions that will enable us to capture a healthy share of the market ….."

State of California

Department of the Air Force

Array Designer, a comprehensive desktop tool for designing oligos for microarrays, offers the ability to make microarrays for the challenges of the post-sequencing era.