Waters Corporation Improves Automation of Public Health Laboratories for Electronic Disease Surveillance
Waters Corporation today announced it is expanding its efforts into the Public Health Laboratory (PHL) sector by providing an integrated information management solution with Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) vendor ChemWare, Inc. Today’s announcement leverages the information management strengths of Waters® NuGenesis® Scientific Data Management System (SDMS) with ChemWare’s HORIZON® LIMS software to generate a single XML standard format from multiple, disparate data sources. PHLs throughout the U.S. are embarking on major modernization efforts, including much-needed upgrades to information management solutions for secure integration and exchange of public health-related data. This standard format helps improve automation and addresses the technical and data management requirements necessary to respond quickly to public health threats.
Rohit Khanna, Ph.D., Vice President, Worldwide Marketing for Waters Corporation, said, “Waters is committed to delivering end-to-end scientific information management solutions to the public health sector. NuGenesis SDMS plays a critical role enabling the next-generation of information management solutions for secure integration and exchange of public health-related data.”
“Through our integration of the Waters NuGenesis SDMS platform, we’re satisfying a critical need in the public health community for a technology-independent, long-term data management solution,” said Robert Whitehead, Vice President of ChemWare. “Waters NuGenesis SDMS leverages a print-to-database technique to aggregate the underlying instrument and desktop information into a secure, scalable, centralized data repository. The technology allows for a very high level of collaboration among public health officials, without compromising data security or traceability to the data source.”
Streamlining Access to Public Health Information
PHLs throughout the U.S. are embarking on major modernization efforts as they face unique automation challenges from an analytical data collection, management, and reporting standpoint. The largest PHLs typically analyze tens of thousands of specimens each month. Their capabilities vary widely, and can include tests for microbial and viral infections in humans and animals, environmental health, food and drug contaminants, and diseases in newborn infants. Hundreds of different models of instruments are deployed across the country, most of which utilize proprietary data systems and produce non-standard data formats. Exacerbating the problem is the fact that most instrument records are reduced to paper, making the assembly and sharing of test reports a time-consuming, laborious process. Today’s announcement fulfills PHL requirements for a robust document control and record management solution, critical for long-term disease surveillance and historical health and safety data analysis.
About ChemWare, Inc.
ChemWare, Inc., a North Carolina-based software development company founded in 1987, provides mission-critical information management solutions to the world’s most highly automated environmental, bioanalytical and industrial laboratories, over ninety percent of which produce data subject to litigation. In a recent independent, CDC-sponsored study, HORIZON received the highest overall ranking of LIMS targeted for public health laboratories. ChemWare has been a Waters NuGenesis SDMS OEM partner since 2002. www.chemware.com
About Waters Corporation
Waters Corporation holds worldwide leading positions in three complementary analytical technologies – liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry and thermal analysis. These markets account for $4.5 – $5.0 billion of the overall $20 + billion analytical instrument market.
For ChemWare inquiries, please contact: Marya Metivier, ChemWare, Inc. 919-855-8716 or email mmetivier@chemware.com .
Waters and NuGenesis are registered trademarks of Waters Corporation. HORIZON is a registered trademark of ChemWare, Inc.
