PerkinElmer, Inc., a global leader focused on improving the health and safety of people and the environment, has launched the Search Genius application, designed for the Microsoft SharePoint platform. The new system provides researchers with a single software system to search, save and share unstructured data stored throughout their organization, thereby making enterprise-wide knowledge accessible for more productive and effective workflows.

The Search Genius platform is a powerful search application that enables researchers to use both text and structure searches of reports and technical documents stored using the SharePoint framework and E-Notebook system, as well as text searches of the Internet. With the Search Genius platform, researchers can more readily gain broader access to previously difficult-to-access data. This enables greater and more holistic visibility to organization-wide information resources that researchers can then more easily leverage into new and existing projects. Scientists can also save their search results and easily create links and annotations that document their ideas and facilitate collaboration.

“Researchers in life sciences, whether in academia or commercial biopharma, are increasingly finding that simply generating data and analysis are not enough to provide the workflow efficiency and productivity they need to succeed,” said Michael Stapleton, general manager, Informatics, PerkinElmer. “The ability to find information that correlates with their immediate and long-term requirements, as well as to utilize and share it across their organization, is becoming a paramount ongoing need. Search Genius provides researchers with access to data that enables them to make decisions faster, based on its ability to collect, consolidate and analyze, so they can act on disparate pieces of information that may otherwise not be thought of or known to be important or relevant.”

The Search Genius platform utilizes Microsoft’s FAST Search Server 2010 to create an out-of-the-box solution for researchers that is not separated and isolated from other applications.  Researchers can use the Search Genius platform to carry out text and structure searches from the Microsoft SharePoint platform as well as from inside PerkinElmer’s E-Notebook system, while simultaneously conducting and documenting their research.

The application also allows for the extension of search capabilities to include any data sources that can be indexed by FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, including Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) content from other vendors and from scientific journals. Completely integrated into the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint framework, the Search Genius system requires no additional IT overhead.

The Search Genius platform allows researchers to easily save the hits that result from their searches, something that is difficult to do with most web search engines. This makes it possible to organize their research ideas within an organizational space that includes text and structure searches from multiple sources. Scientists can also annotate those hits with notes to help them recall the inspiration behind their search - not just where they found the information.

Features of the Search Genius application include: integrated search of ELN content, SharePoint content and the Internet, structure searches of SharePoint and E-Notebook content, ability to annotate and share search results, easily created hyperlinks to interesting content, access from the SharePoint framework directly or from PerkinElmer’s E-Notebook and complete integration into the SharePoint 2010 FAST framework, avoiding additional IT overhead.

PerkinElmer is a leading provider of discovery, collaboration, and knowledge enterprise solutions, desktop software, scientific databases and consulting services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and chemical industries.