PHILADELPHIA—For the third year in a row, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is a winner of Microsoft Corp.'s Life Sciences Innovation Awards, which recognize best-in-class companies for their innovative use of Microsoft-based solutions.

Microsoft selected Thermo Fisher, along with Emory University, part of the Atlantic Clinical and Translational Science Institute (ACTSI), as winner of this award for their use of Thermo Scientific Nautilus LIMS (laboratory information management system) to advance information exchange in the clinical and translational science environment across a diverse set of laboratories.

A key initiative for ACTSI is the selection and deployment of LIMS across the consortium to support a "virtual bio-repository" environment. The ACTSI implemented Nautilus LIMS at Emory University as part of an enterprise biospecimen management system rollout to enhance workflow, foster collaboration and effectively manage samples. With the need to connect many laboratories and external institutions with its enterprise LIMS, Emory reportedly achieved a level of standardization with Nautilus that is replicable across configurations and gave Emory and ACTSI an informatics solution that will be an important component of their translational science informatics infrastructure.

The award, was announced at the Drug Information Association's (DIA) 46th Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.,

"The Emory/ACTSI implementation takes advantage of Thermo Scientific WebAccess deployed on Microsoft technologies to deliver rich client functionality via a web browser to both internal and external users," said Michael Naimoli, director of life sciences industry solutions, Microsoft, in presenting the award. "In addition, the Study Design Module (SDM) created by Thermo Fisher and Emory using Microsoft tools provides an easy to use graphical user interface for study design, which allows the ACTSI to design workflows more quickly."

The implementation of the Nautilus LIMS solution reportedly will enable consistent terminology usage and information model mapping across different laboratories, allowing integration with upstream clinical study systems and downstream laboratory analysis processes. The solution is said to have resulted in significant cost savings due to reduced maintenance needs and simpler integration, as well as improving efficiency and data quality.

Time savings have also been generated as deployment of a standard base configuration with optional additional lab specific configuration minimizes deployment time for initial lab implementations and use of the new SDM extension will reduce the configuration time for new study protocols by as much as 50 percent, providing more efficient management and tracking of mid-study modifications.

In addition, the audit and traceability features of Nautilus ensure regulatory compliance throughout the management of research specimens. The ACTSI Clinical Interaction Network Nautilus implementation currently supports 117 study investigators/coordinators conducting 47 research studies with more than 37,000 original samples and more than 102,000 aliquots.