| 04/21/2020 - The Race to Develop Treatments and Vaccines for COVID-19 The coronavirus pandemic has now reached nearly every country in the world, with cases being confirmed in more than 200 countries and territories. As of April 10th, 2020, there have been over 1.6 million cases reported globally. The actual numbers of cases are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, unreported cases, and suspicions that some countries have not been accurately reporting the scope of their outbreaks. With COVID-19 continuing to spread across the globe, many pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies are racing to develop vaccines and effective therapeutics to address the pandemic. As the premier laboratory informatics service provider for the life science industry, Astrix Technology Group is proud to support many of the companies on the front lines in this effort. In this blog, we will highlight some of the groundbreaking work being done right now by our customers to combat COVID-19.
04/21/2020 - Autoscribe Informatics Announces LIMS Distributor in West Africa Autoscribe Informatics is delighted to announce that it has appointed Promatics Technologies Nigeria as our distributor in Nigeria to sell, configure and support the Matrix family of Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) products. Based in Abuja, Nigeria, Promatics Technologies provide a range of technology services and consulting solutions, including healthcare and clinical systems, to clients across the region.
04/14/2020 - How biotechs are racing to develop COVID-19 treatments - Part 2 of 3 The novel coronavirus has had sweeping effects on the world at large since its emergence last winter, and it will no doubt continue to affect and change the world we live in. As we do our part to shelter-in-place and practice social distancing, there are leagues of scientists and researchers working around the clock on therapeutics to treat patients infected with SARS-CoV 2. This article is the second in a three-part series covering the response of biotech companies to the COVID-19 crisis. The first article in this series is: How biotechs are racing to develop COVID-19 tests.
04/14/2020 - COVID-19 Testing and the Important Role of a LIMS We are living in unprecedented times right now with the recent outbreak of SAR-CoV-2 and the global emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. And now, as never before, our nation’s attention is focused on laboratories and the diagnostic industry at large. The quality of diagnostic testing during this time of international crisis will be talked about for years to come. Fortunately, many companies have joined the fight to help facilitate COVID-19 testing, as laboratories quickly ramp up to add this to their testing menu. Yet, while many of the news headlines focus on instrument manufacturers and new testing techniques, one element that is often overlooked is the critical role of a laboratory’s LIMS.
04/01/2020 - COVID-19 Testing for the Physician Office Laboratory (POL)  Like it or not, physician or not, the current pandemic is already affecting you in some ways or others. And those physicians on the front line seeing patients cannot avoid being involved. If you have testing equipment of your own, at least you may be able to recoup some of the costs of seeing potential COVID-19 patients, handling specimens and meeting reporting requirements. | 
In this 2019 paper published in Environmental Health, Udesky et al. share their organization's guidance towards addressing quality in environmental exposure testing and data. In particular, the authors note the importance of reporting quality control data along with chemical measurements in published research, stating that its lacking leaves "readers uncertain about the level of confidence in the reported data." Their objective was to provide full guidance on the implementation, interpretation, and reporting of QC data. After explaining their approach to study design, study implementation, and data interpretation, the authors conclude that their guidance, visualizations, and supplementary content provide "a useful set of tools for getting the best information from valuable environmental exposure datasets, and enabling valid comparison and synthesis of exposure data across studies."
