Instrument Manufacturers Collaborate on Interoperability

Agilent Technologies and Thermo Fisher Scientific announced an agreement on Nov. 5, 2015 to exchange instrument controls to improve the productivity and user experience of customers using the companies software and instruments.

Under this agreement, the companies will exchange instrument-control driver documentation and software for liquid chromatographs, gas chromatographs, capillary electrophoresis, and ion chromatographs. The companies will also provide technical assistance to each other’s software development groups, for control of Agilent instruments in the Thermo Scientific Chromeleon software, and Thermo Scientific instruments in the Agilent OpenLAB CDS software. 

The agreement also defines terms for licensing and redistribution of instrument control software, as well as formal escalation mechanisms to jointly drive technical issue resolution for their mutual customers.

The instrument control exchange agreement reflects the increasing importance of manufacturer collaboration to achieve interoperability and standardization of multivendor instrument control, so that analytical laboratories can increase productivity while minimizing technical and regulatory risks and validation costs, according to a press statement. 

Source: Agilent Technologies