SiLA invites all corporate members to the 3rd annual SiLA Luncheon at MipTec Conference. This event will be carried out on Wednesday, 22 September 2010, 10:30 – 13:30 at Messe Basel, CH-4000 Basel, Lecture Hall F.

Please send your registrations by email directly to SiLA.

Non-Member Companies who are interested to attend, can sign up for Observing Membership (EUR 600.- p.a.) before the event. Observing Membership entitles for free access to SiLA Member Events, work-in-progress documentation from all SiLA projects, Please request our membership agreement form by email to SiLA for this purpose.

Due to a majority of people requesting webcasts instead of live event participation we decided to start a series of SiLA webinars in November providing similar content as planned for the SiLA Conference. Therefore the  live SiLA Conference event, originally planned for Sept 20, 2010, at Novartis Basel, will not take place ! Thank you for your understanding.

SiLA exhibits on Lab Automation 2010 in Palm Springs, booth 367  from 24.-26.01.2010. The newest standardisation projects and pilot implementations will be presented on Jan 27 11:15-12:45 by Dieter Speidel, CTO of SiLA. Location: Smoketree A-D, Palm Springs Convention Center

SiLA is pleased to announce its luncheon on Tuesday, October 13, 2009 (11:00-12:15) at MipTec Drug Discovery Congress in Basel (Room Nairobi). In the course of this luncheon, a presentation will be given featuring the SiLA Initiative, its mission and goals, as well as informing about the status of SiLA’s activities. Participants will get the chance to receive a registered copy of the SiLA General Interface Specification and signing up for Validation or Implementation Partnership with SiLA.

Attendance is limited. Admission is free. Contact us for receiving a personal invitation.

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.

SiLA’s scope and actual work-in-progress status were presented and discussed April 27 on the 15th annual SBS conference in Lille during a session organized by the Special Interest Group Automation Quality Control. The presentation was held by Dr. Carsten Etzold, Director Marketing and Customized Solutions at Hamilton Bonaduz and Board Member / Chair Supplier Committee of SiLA.

More than 60 attendees were informed about SiLA’s mission, scope, roadmap and current work-in-progress status.

Participants confirmed the need for standardisation in lab automation and appreciated the fact that competitors like e.g. Tecan and Hamilton can cooperate in SiLA supporting a future common standard without losing their unique product features.

Representatives of applier (pharma) companies requested SiLA shall foster the interface standardisation specifically for devices providing new technologies.

All comments and suggestions collected through this meeting were reported and discussed on SiLA’s recent core team meeting May 09. We like to thank the SBS organisators for having provided us with this forum.