Toolpoint’s annual CEO Event at Novartis Campus in Basel on 29.05.2009, was dominated by the SiLA standardisation project. Novartis was hosting 35 attendees, mostly CEOs or top management representatives of Toolpoint member companies and -this year for the first time- guests from the SiLA members circle.

Novartis’ global head of the Center for Proteomic Chemistry, Sylvain Cottens and Peter Fürst, Head of Lead Finding Platform Basel, were pointing out the criticalityof standardisation allowing rapid integration and flexibility in adaptation to new application or workflow requirements. Looking at the complexity and the high number of different lab automation systems Novartis was building for their lead finding platform, the need for standardisation becomes more than obvious.

Fürst and Cottens both appealed to the managers of lab automation equipment manufacturing companies to strongly support the SiLA project and thereby making sure that new products will meet the true needs of the pharma industry for being able to build and maintain reliable, flexible and cost effective systems.

Peter Schleiffer, managing director of Toolpoint and SiLA’s president, and Dieter Speidel, CTO of SiLA, promised Novartis to keep up and even increase the strong pace in which SiLA is moving forward towards establishing the global standard for rapid integration.