Chemical information management systems

LIMS have become more sophisticated and recently have been combined with two newly developed systems, the chemical information management system (CIMS), which searches for, manipulates, and stores chemical structures, reactions, and associated data, and the analytical information management system (AIMS), which acts as a central repository for instrumental data (e.g., chromatograms). 

In-house chemical information management systems began to emerge at some of the larger chemical and pharmaceutical firms. These included CONTRAST and SOCRATES at Pfizer, SYNLIB at SmithKline, COUSIN at Upjohn, MSDRL/CSIS at Merck, and CROSSBOW at ICI (27). The Chemical Abstracts database was made available online in 1967 (28). In 1980 this became CAS ONLINE. A compre-... 

Many chemical information management systems, especially modeling programs, permit a... 

INFORMATION INTEGRATION DISTRIBUTED CHEMICAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS... 

Information management by EPA, as mandated under TSCA has centered on the development of CSIN (Chemical Substances Information Network). In response to Section 10(b) this information management system has evolved to retrieve toxicological and other scientific data which could be useful to the Administrator in carrying out the act. After several years and about an equal number of millions of dollars, currently a prototype networking... 

Our solution to this problem was the development of an interactive computer system that can be used by all professionals in the company to locate and manipulate chemical information. This system is called MAECIS, an acronymn for Management and Analysis Executive for Chemical Information and Structures. As the name implies, MAECIS is both a chemical information storage system and a chemical structure analysis system. 

For the analytical chemist, databases are an essential resource when carrying out their day-to-day activities in product identification. All the major spectroscopic techniques have large databases associated with them, these are used to compare spectra derived from unknown chemicals etc. and so the whole process of product identification is made faster. These are dealt with using a laboratory information management system (LIMS) (see Section B, 2.9.1). 

Databases are used widely in commercial applications and have become the foundation of modern data processing. Various bibliographic, financial and chemical reference databases are perhaps the most familiar to scientists at this time. However, the proliferation of Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) makes analytical laboratory databases accessible to most laboratory personnel. Such databases store analytical data and scientific information from which a variety of documents and reports are generated. 

It would be pure speculation to estimate the impact of changes in hardware and operating systems on chemical information management. Presently, Sun Microsystems is probably the dominant Unix system in chemical database management, largely because of their network presence and their support of Java. Microsoft has released their Windows XP operating system, which merges the Win-... 

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