Poster Session 1 (Topic: Drug Discovery Technologies)Wednesday, September 21, 2011, 13:00 - 14:30Standardized device integrationH. Bär*, U. Syré
Infoteam Software AG (Stäfa, CH)
In general a laboratory consists of medical devices for sample preparation and analysis. They are controlled by a central Process Management System (PMS). Standardisation in Lab Automation (SiLA) is an initiative that started 2009 to specify a standard communication protocol based on Ethernet between PMS and devices. Several companies are already realizing the standard.
We want to support these efforts by a software library we created. It allows the user to rapidly integrate SiLA devices at runtime. Besides of discovery, which gains importance with the use of Ethernet, the library supports the execution of the command set that is provided by the devices.
The Figure shows that the library contains a factory. It can create instances of the class Device, which is a proxy class to control a device. It has a request handler that can send web service messages by means of the SoapBuilder. Additionally the RequestHandler registers the request ID, which is used to associate SiLA events to command calls. Such events are handled by the HttpWorker and forwarded over the Factory to the RequestManager. This has a list of devices available and can call an according method in the correct instance of Device.
We used our library already in different projects. Besides of customer projects we built a setup for fairs to show usages of our library, such as the control of a Thermo Fisher Multidrop on the MipTec 2009. To access the device via SiLA a converter box was used. With the user interface on a PMS only few options could be selected. These were a local reset of the dispenser, it could be primed and it allowed dispensing and shaking. This little demonstration shows that commands can be sent with our library over SiLA.
Currently we are investigating whether a distributed laboratory control can be built up. We assume that a central PMS is not necessary, integrators are only used to it. This kind of setup came up based on interfaces, such as RS232 or USB. Using SiLA with Ethernet as communication interface, distributed control can be put in place.
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