Gentronix - Contronics

Posted on: 16/09/22

CLIENT BACKGROUND

Gentronix is a specialist contract research organisation based at Alderley Park, Cheshire. Gentronix is focused on delivering predictive toxicology products and services to global chemical sectors. Working with companies from early screening through to regulatory safety assessment, they deliver innovative solutions for both genetic toxicology and skin/ocular toxicology.

WHY A SYSTEM WAS REQUIRED

Gentronix’s current monitoring system was basic and not scalable for their growth expectations so required an upgrade. The new system would need to monitor their fridges, freezers (- 20 to -80), incubators and ambient areas. With ambitious growth plans, Gentronix’s also required a system that was easily expandable to cover new non-adjacent labs in future locations.

WHY CONTRONICS

Charlotte Warrender, who is the Facility Manager at Gentronix and responsible for ensuring that the buildings, facilities and services are safe, compliant and meet the needs of Gentronix and their customers, said; “It was important for us to work with a supplier who understood and had experience of installations in a busy laboratory. Data integrity is key to us, so we opted for an on-premises system by Contronics to make sure historical data was securely stored and instantly accessible to the laboratory team.”

Gentronix’s new monitoring system can be accessed both onsite and remotely via a portal, which means Charlotte and the team can quickly log on and check everything is correct, regardless of their location. The historical data stored on the system has allowed the team to spot trends and interrogate audit logs. They can schedule alarm notifications for specific days and times, which is particularly useful as some of their equipment is turned off during nights and weekends. Their new monitoring system also features InfoPoint – an interactive dashboard by Contronics. The visual display is colour coded so excursions can easily be seen and heard. The team also has the ability to view graphs and clear alarms easily via the dashboard.

RESULTS

Charlotte added; “The monitoring solution has met all our specifications. It was easy and hassle-free to install and provides 24/7 live monitoring of all the equipment and areas at our site. Besides monitoring temperature and humidity, we can also monitor CO2 levels in the incubators we use for our cell-based assays.

“Contronics have proven to be a professional supplier. The ongoing support has been good and they have assisted us with our expansion plans. We have expanded the system already and will continue to add to the system as we grow in 2023. After the final validation process, we will be moving away from all manual checks of all equipment. This will give us an approximate labour saving of 840 hours per year.”