Subject: BRISTOL-MYERS SQUIBB JOINS ELECTRONIC NOTEBOOKS CONSORTIUM TO DEVELOP SYSTEMS

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 01:39:54 -0400 (EDT)

This is hot news to anyone concerned with capturing, managing, or protecting
laboratory data or intellectual property in major corporations.  

If you are not responsible for these areas, could you please forward this to
whomever in your organization is responsible for them?  Thank you.

We apologize for any possible duplication in mailing lists.  
========================================================
For Immediate Release

Contact:  Leslie Doyle
The Collaborative Electronic Notebooks Systems (CENS) Consortium
800 West Cummings Park, Suite 5400, Woburn 01801 Massachusetts USA
Phone: 617-935-9600  Fax: 617-935-3113;  Internet: [email-masked].

BRISTOL-MYERS SQUIBB JOINS ELECTRONIC NOTEBOOKS CONSORTIUM TO DEVELOP SYSTEMS

BOSTON, MA-- Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, one of the world's largest
pharmaceutical and consumer products companies, recently joined the
Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems (CENS) Consortium.  The
Consortium's purpose is to drive the creation of reasonably-priced,
forward-looking systems to support R&D team project data management,
collaboration and electronic laboratory notebook keeping to meet patent and
regulatory requirements.  The Consortium is made up of eleven Fortune 500
companies, including the Dow Chemical Company, HB Fuller, Rohm and Haas and
Searle/Monsanto.

"Collaborative Electronic Notebooks will prove to be one of the most exciting
innovations for science and engineering since paper notebooks began to be
used by scientists centuries ago," says Dr. Lysakowski, Executive Director
for the Consortium and Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems Association
(CENSA). "However, there are issues, caveats and solutions to be aware of
before proceeding through this busy intersection of science, law, business
and data management."

Karl Zoeckler, Senior Information Scientist for Bristol Myers Squibb
explains, "Our strategy is to employ the CENS Consortium as a knowledge base
to develop open solutions and standards that will fit into our existing
computing environment and allow us to grow with the system. We also believe
that the consortium will drive the acceptance of electronic records by
regulatory agencies and the Patent & Trademark Office. Although an electronic
notebook system could be integrated from existing software at this time, we
perceive the costs to be extremely high, and the functionality of such a
system would likely fall short of our expectations."

The Consortium is now recruiting additional members and vendors. Consortium
members are defining and catalyzing the development of commercially-supported
electronic notebooks that capture, store and manage electronic records within
existing systems for groupware, document management, the World Wide Web, and
other systems used in scientific laboratories. These systems are being
designed to be advanced, strategic systems that provide operational
excellence for companies investing in and using them.  The Consortium is a
product research and development consortium, delivering extensive
state-of-the-art knowledge, system specifications, hardware and software
products and training.  Commercial vendors are being asked to develop the
systems and components specified by the teams of technical experts in CENSA.
 The work is being based on forward-looking, open standards technologies such
as CORBA, Java, C++, XML, http, and others.

Organizations interested in becoming Consortium Members, or seeking more
information, should contact Membership Department, The Collaborative
Electronic Notebooks Systems (CENS) Consortium, 800 West Cummings Park, Suite
5400, Woburn 01801 Massachusetts USA Phone: 617-935-9600  Fax: 617-935-3113;
 Internet: [email-masked].

Bristol-Myers Squibb, headquartered in New York City, is a diversified health
and personal care company, providing pharmaceuticals, nutritionals, medical
devices and consumer products. The Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems
Consortium is an international group of end users and vendors, working
together to produce state-of-the-art hardware and software solutions to
electronic recordkeeping, collaboration and information management in
scientific and technical fields. The CENS Consortium is headquartered in
Woburn, Massachusetts.

The CENS Consortium, 800 West Cummings Park, Suite 5400, Woburn,
Massachusetts, USA 01801, phone 617 935-9600;  fax 617 935-3113;  e-mail:
[email-masked].