Thermo Fisher Scientific Partners with NextDocs to Offer Comprehensive Enterprise Document Management and Workflow Solutions for the Laboratory

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., the world leader in serving science, has entered into a collaborative agreement with NextDocs Corporation to bundle and sell the NextDocs enterprise document, quality and compliance management solution suite. The offering is a natural extension of Thermo Fisher Scientific’s portfolio of LIMS (laboratory information management systems) and CDS (chromatography data systems) products, allowing the company to offer a comprehensive, fully integrated informatics and content management solution to the industry. Thermo Fisher and NextDocs announce the collaboration from NextDocs’ booth # 120 at the DIA Annual Meeting (Drug Information Association) in Boston on June 22-26 2008.

The NextDocs Document and Compliance Suite will be sold by Thermo Fisher Scientific under the NextDocs brand name and offers users an intuitive ‘plug and play’ solution for managing data that addresses the growing need for an easy to use, web-based solution that is designed to enable organizations to comply with FDA 21 CFR Part 11, GMP, GLP, GCP and other regulations and industry standards. “There has been a need in the industry that has gone largely unanswered until now, for a secure, cost effective, validated content management solution that incorporates structured data from LIMS, CDS and other enterprise systems along with unstructured information that support laboratory processes, all in a completely validated solution. In the past, solutions have been incomplete, cumbersome and expensive.” says Dave Champagne, vice president and general manager, Informatics at Thermo Fisher Scientific.

NextDocs product suite is designed to be used in both regulated and unregulated environments to provide organizations with a complete content management and collaboration system for managing documents, records (e.g. training records), SOP’s (standard operating procedures), activities and other information critical to the enterprise. Built on the leading Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007 platform, NextDocs Document and Compliance Suite delivers content management tools for regulatory compliance and operational excellence without sacrificing usability and affordability. The Suite provides organizations with the ability to track, approve, and manage data in a secure and centralized repository. NextDocs products require zero desktop installation, allowing for rapid deployment and ROI. A valuable component of the NextDocs Document and Compliance Suite is that it is fully web-based with rich user interfaces that can be securely accessed from any location, and seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Office® and other desktop applications to improve productivity.

“NextDocs has developed a powerful family of document and quality management solutions that are specifically designed to meet the needs of biotech, pharmaceutical and other FDA-regulated firms,” said NextDocs CEO Zikria Syed. “Our partnership with Thermo Fisher Scientific, with its firm stake in the life sciences information management business, will ensure that NextDocs is the next great tool for ensuring regulatory compliance while providing easy and secure document sharing amongst the scientific community.”

The company’s agreement with NextDocs to deliver the Document and Compliance Suite further cements the existing relationship between Thermo Fisher Scientific and Microsoft to deliver next-generation and best of breed open solutions. “We’re thrilled with the extent of our ongoing relationship with Thermo Fisher Scientific,” said Michael Naimoli, U.S. life sciences industry solutions director, Microsoft Corp. “Organizations store documents in a wide range of isolated systems on multiple software platforms – making the retrieval and synthesis of information daunting tasks. This new alliance between Thermo Fisher and NextDocs goes a long way toward addressing the need for regulated content management, integrated workflow administration and compliant collaboration in the enterprise setting. We believe this joint solution will bring enormous value to the industry as a whole.”

“By offering an enterprise content management solution that is tightly integrated with our LIMS and CDS portfolio for regulated laboratory environments, Thermo Fisher is better positioned to offer our customers the most comprehensive informatics solution in the industry,” concludes Dave Champagne.