Since April 2000, Huggins' group has been using the Watson LIMS platform, originally a product of Pharmaceutical Software Systems Inc., which was acquired by InnaPhase Corp., in turn acquired in 2004 by Thermo Electron Corp., Waltham, Mass. Before using the Watson LIMS, the group used a home-grown platform. "We had an internally developed LIMS database that was built around supporting one specific study. It wasn't Y2K compliant. It was not 21 CFR Part 11 compliant. It essentially met the needs at the time, but it was not a system that we could evolve or grow with. It was very limited in its capabilities," he says.

. . .

Legacy data As is typical when replacing any well-worn, home-grown data management system, Huggins' group needed to decide how they were going to handle legacy data. "We decided to draw a line in the sand. Studies that used the old LIMS system [stayed in that system]. For any new efforts, we used the Watson LIMS. And that worked out pretty well," he says.

By this point, however, the old system is completely shut down, to which Huggins says, "Thank God. But it was a very labor-intensive effort because a couple of studies [in the old system] were phase III clinical studies that dragged on for several years."

Drug Discovery and Development

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2005