Roswell Park Cancer Institute Licenses LabVantage’s Sapphire™ To Realize the
Bridgewater, NJ. October 31, 2006. Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) has licensed LabVantage’s Sapphire Laboratory Information Management Suite, including LabVantage’s Sapphire BioBanking Module, as the cornerstone of its enterprise-wide translational research initiative. A public benefit corporation that is partially funded by New York State, RPCI is a comprehensive cancer center, providing cancer treatment, research and teaching facilities located in Buffalo, New York, and is a member of the prestigious National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
To achieve translational research, the lines of demarcation between the clinic and research data must be removed, while strenuously protecting patient personal information. Too much knowledge is bottled up within each data silo within the organization. Using Sapphire, RPCI will remove the current departmental data silos by integrating the biorepositories with the core research laboratories and interfacing with disparate clinical systems. With NCI’s caBIG initiative as a guide, RPCI and its partners will use Sapphire to query across the RPCI enterprise providing meaningful results to researchers and clinicians to realize the promise of translational research.
“The vision is to have Roswell biobanks act as the ‘sanctioned pathway’ between the hospital/clinic and research, maintaining compliance with NCI’s Guidelines for NCI-Supported Biorepositories,” states JoAnne Ruh, VP of Information Technology for RPCI. “By moving aggressively to eliminate ‘islands of knowledge,’ Sapphire will enable RPCI to accelerate research through the power of collaborative research,” she added.
LabVantage is extremely excited to assist RPCI’s future break-through research efforts, enabling translational medicine and bolstering its reputation as a preeminent cancer institute,” says Jim Aurelio, President of LabVantage.
This is a large-scale project that will ultimately touch every part of Roswell Park’s enterprise, from the clinic to the research side. It encompasses more than twelve core laboratories and four biobanks, including several from the University of Buffalo’s Center of Excellence co-located at Roswell Park. After a lengthy review of numerous competing laboratory information management systems (LIMS) and biobank software packages, RPCI selected LabVantage’s Sapphire. “Sapphire is designed to address the distinct challenges of translational medicine,” explains David Manning, Research Applications Administrator for RPCI. Manning elaborates, “It provides for data capture, information management, storage, and compliance features on a flexible and open enterprise platform. One example of this is that Sapphire will allow RPCI to import and instantiate multiple data dictionaries creating and enforcing a common syntax that will eventually optimize queries across the Institute.”
About Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) is America’s first cancer center founded in 1898 by Dr. Roswell Park. RPCI provides a wide variety of inpatient and outpatient cancer treatment services in addition to its extensive research activities. In addition, RPCI is the only upstate New York facility to hold the National Cancer Center designation of “comprehensive cancer center” and to serve as a member of the prestigious National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Over its long history, Roswell Park Cancer Institute has made fundamental contributions to reducing the cancer burden and has successfully maintained an exemplary leadership role in setting the national standards for cancer care, research and education.
The campus spans 25 acres in downtown Buffalo and consists of 15 buildings with about one million square feet of space. A new hospital building, completed in 1998, houses a comprehensive diagnostic and treatment center. In addition, the Institute built a new medical research complex and renovated existing education and research space to support its future growth and expansion.
About LabVantage. LabVantage Solutions, Inc., an innovative global provider of enterprise solutions tailored for leading laboratories, serves discovery, development, formulation, process research, raw material testing, and quality management laboratories across multiple industries. Sapphire, a thin-client laboratory information management suite, is tailored to manage an organization’s critical laboratory information across its worldwide R&D pipeline and manufacturing supply chain to optimize productivity and more effectively share knowledge. A Chatterjee Management Group company, LabVantage is headquartered in Bridgewater, NJ, U.S.A., with direct or partner coverage in Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, India, Jordan, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Netherlands, Norway, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom. Further information about LabVantage and Sapphire is available at www.labvantage.com .
