Persistent Systems Partners With University of California, Davis (UCD) to Develop caELMIR 2 Application

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire - November 11, 2009) - Persistent Systems, one of the leaders in software product development services, today announced that it has partnered with the University of California, Davis to develop caELMIR 2 (Electronic Laboratory Management Information Resource), a caBIG® LIMS (Laboratory Information Management System) application, designed specifically to provide the pre-clinical scientist with a data management system to record experimental data.

caELMIR 2 allows investigators to manage every aspect of pre-clinical studies -- including tracking experimental tissue data and utilization, managing experiments and handling the multitude of data types recorded for given experiments. In the past, scientists had separate, specially designed databases to store specific data sets. However, the data model in the database had limitations; it was ineffective if the data collected did not fit in the database. Additionally, such silo systems had synchronization issues, creating incomprehensible data. caELMIR 2 helps address all these issues effectively.

caELMIR addresses the needs of the Mouse Models of Human Cancer Consortium (MMHCC). Persistent has successfully integrated this with the other caBIG® applications -- caELMIR and caTissue, while maintaining the semantic and syntactic interoperability of the integrated applications. The integrated application provides a single access point for pre-clinical experimental data and tissue repository data, allowing investigators to find and procure tissues from previous experiments.

“The updated caELMIR application represents a leap in scientific data management,” said Dr. Jose Galvez, Associate Professor, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of California, Davis. “The caELMIR-caTissue integration enables scientists to store and easily access experimental data in a single repository. Further, the hypothesis-driven approach to experimentation supports the creation of complex searches across the entire data model and hierarchical data organization. Additionally, with its ability to manage the collected data, caELMIR ensures an increase in lab efficiency.”

“The caELMIR-caTissue integration represents a major milestone in helping scientists with pre-clinical research,” said Aditya Phatak, vice president, Life Sciences and Healthcare, Persistent Systems. “As the application developer, Persistent is a one-stop solution provider for all caELMIR, caTissue and caBIG® needs. With its technical expertise, in-depth domain knowledge and vast experience in biomedical informatics development, Persistent stands ready to provide solutions to facilitate clinical and translational research.”

The highlight of the integration is the full reuse of existing Common Data Elements (CDE), ensuring semantic interoperability and retaining existing metadata information of all reused CDEs for a seamless data exchange over the caGrid.

Persistent has invested more than 700 person-months in the development of seven different caBIG® applications and the customization of more than a dozen installations of caTissue at institutions across the U.S. The company has nearly a decade long experience in the life science space with focus on four main domains: bioinformatics, clinical informatics, medical devices and instrumentation, with special focus on lab automation. Persistent also has developed expertise and reusable software components that help in providing services ranging from data integration and warehousing, laboratory information management systems, regulatory compliance, visualization and analytics.

As an open source application, caELMIR can be freely downloaded and deployed. Persistent, a licensed caBIG® support service provider, runs a support center which offers a variety of support and training services related to the caBIG® application. For more information on Persistent caBIG® support center and caTissue, visit: http://www.persistentsys.com/Default.aspx?tabid=106.

About Persistent Systems

Established in 1990, Persistent Systems is recognized as an award-winning technology company specializing in software product development services. With 4,200+ employees, innovative business models, and reusable assets and frameworks, Persistent helps its customers increase revenues and margins, and enhance brand value. Persistent Systems has delivered over 2,400 software product releases to their 175+ customers in the last six years. It has developed proven processes for the entire product lifecycle which reduce time-to-market while delivering consistent quality and customer satisfaction -- as evidenced by customer partnerships that span many years. For more information, please visit: www.persistentsys.com