IT and Informatics Weekly New Product Roundup


By Salvatore Salamone Bio-IT World

To jumpstart the New Year, vendors are already rolling out new products for managing and securing life science data collected in drug discovery and development processes.

Thermo last week introduced Darwin, the latest in its line of application-specific, purpose-built laboratory information management systems (LIMS). The Darwin LIMS is aimed at managing the data required to bring a drug from pre-clinical trials stage through clinical trials and manufacturing. The package has the common functions found in virtually all LIMS, including a test results database and sample registration and management capabilities. But the software also comes with about 15 pre-configured libraries, including ones for formulation types, sample types, indications, dosage forms, package types, and controlled substance schedules. Additionally, Thermo includes the ICH (International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use) templates for stability studies.

Darwin also has special wizards that let managers define the business logic and the sequence of steps required to perform dissolution testing, tests for content uniformity, and to conduct assays. Since the Darwin LIMS is designed to cover the pre-clinical, clinical, and manufacturing stages, it includes many features aimed at ensuring that the data it collects meets the regulatory requirements of the FDA and other international agencies. And while providing the safeguards (e.g., electronic signature support, audit trails, etc.) to ensure clinical trial and manufacturing data meets regulatory compliance, Darwin also gives life science companies a way to flag and manage pre-clinical R&D data, which might not have the same stringent requirements. (A more detailed story about Darwin can be found here.)

Google announced the release of the beta version of Google Pack, a collection of Google applications and third-party software. The Google applications in Google Pack include the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, Google Desktop (the company’s desktop search tool), Google Talk, Google Earth (the 3D Earth browser), and the photo organizer Google Picasa. There is also a Google Pack Screensaver, which lets users select a photo or photos to display as a screensaver on their PCs.

Third-party applications bundled in the package include Abode Reader 7, the open source Internet browser Mozilla Firefox with Google Toolbar, Lavasoft’s anti-spyware tool Ad-Aware SE Personal, and Symantec’s Norton Antivirus with a free six-month subscription to updates. Also included in the pack is Cerulean Studios’ chat client and instant messaging application Trillian, RealNetworks’ multimedia player application RealPlayer, and GalleryPlayer Media Networks’ GalleryPlayer HD Images. The Google Pack beta is available for Windows XP (a user must have administrator privileges to install and run the software).

ChemAxon today announced the FreeWeb package, a free cheminformatics toolkit for non-commercial, public websites. The FreeWeb package gives users tools to edit, view, search, calculate properties, and help manage a cheminformatics database. Specifically, the package includes the Marvin Java applet family of tools for creating chemical queries, viewing results, and ligand and macromolecular analysis. It also includes the JChem Base and JChem Cartridge for chemical searching and database management. Additional tools include the Standardiser, which allows the creation of business rules for structure management, and Calculator Plugins, which give researchers a way to better understand a range of structure-based properties of the cheminformatics information on a site. (A more detailed story about the ChemAxon offering can be found here.)

Adobe, Arcot Systems, CoreStreet, nCipher, IBM, and Kyberpass announced they will develop SAFE-enabled products and applications that would give life science companies a way to securely share information and ensure that FDA and other regulatory requirements are met when data is shared. The work is being done as part of the SAFE-BioPharma Association’s SAFE Vendor Partner Program, which encourages development of software and applications that use the SAFE standards for strong authentication and digital signatures to ensure interoperability. The SAFE-BioPharma Association will test all applications and products the companies develop to guarantee that they function according to SAFE requirements.

DataCore Software announced SANmelody 2.0, iSCSI software products for managing and improving the performance of multi-Terabyte IP storage area networks (SANs). The software comes in a variety of configurations. The basic package, which starts at less than $1,000, includes support for multi-terabyte virtual storage pools, disk performance acceleration technology, Windows disk migration for SQL and Exchange databases, and a point-and-click feature to allocate disk capacity. Other packages offer Fibre Channel support and snapshot and volume shadow copy features. Additionally, the software supports Windows file system volumes and storage services including Virtual Disk Services, Volume Shadow Copy Services, and MultiPath I/O.

Verizon Online announced Verizon Secure Mail, an e-mail security service that encrypts e-mail messages to protect sensitive information such as clinical trial patient data. The service uses Echoworx software, which encrypts using standards such as X.509 and S/MIME. Besides encrypting messages, the service also verifies that messages have not been altered, and allows a message to be opened only by the intended recipient. To send an encrypted message the user selects a “Secure” button within the e-mail application. Verizon Secure Mail users can open encrypted messages by entering a password. Recipients who do not use the service are directed to a Verizon message pick-up center, where they can read the e-mail after answering a question with the correct response, which is known only by the sender and recipient. The service currently works with Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express mail users. The service is priced at $6.95 per month per mailbox.

Related Stories:  

IT and Informatics Weekly New Product Roundup (weeks of Dec. 5 to 16)

IT and Informatics Weekly Product Update (week of Nov. 28 to Dec. 2)

IT and Informatics Weekly Product Roundup: Special Holiday Edition

IT and Informatics Weekly New Product Roundup (week of Nov. 14 to 18)

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