Protecting key instruments for disease research

NIH's NIAID protects key instrumentation for critical allergy and infectious disease research at remote Rocky Mountain Laboratories, previously susceptible to irregular power conditions

Franek Technologies has currently installed more than 135 certified, instrumentation-specific laboratory power protection systems at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and a dozen LPS units in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NAIAD) Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML).

As a result of these installations, key instrumentation within the NIAID's RML, located in Hamilton, Montana, is now protected against power fluctuations, damaging harmonics or power failure that could otherwise cause loss of samples and data, costly damage to instrumentation, as well as significant lost productive time.

The risk posed by irregular power conditions at these remote laboratories, as well as the critical nature of the high-profile research, merits the highest level of power protection provided by Franek Technologies.

Franek Technologies' engineering team provided consultation and design of power protection systems for mission critical instrumentation, including microscopy systems from Hitachi and Philips, real-time PCR (polymerase chain reaction) gene amplification, DNA sequencers, and genetic analysers from Applied Biosystems, as well as robotics and gene chip scanner instrumentation systems from Tecan and Affymetrics.

The NIAID RML plays a key role in the nation's biomedical research program and the nation's fight against bioterrorism and emerging viral infections, such as the Avian Influenza A (H5N1 - bird flu).

The state-of-the-art labs, staffed with world-class scientists, rely on extremely sophisticated instrumentation to conduct high-throughput research to better understand, treat, and ultimately prevent infectious, pandemic, immunologic, and allergic diseases.

Such long-term testing and processes often rely on highly leveraged robotic automation that is extremely sensitive to uncontrolled electrical and environmental conditions, such as power fluctuations, intra-lab harmonic distortion or interruptions.

For more than 50 years, NIAID research has led to new therapies, vaccines, diagnostic tests, and other technologies that have improved the health of millions of people in the United States and around the world.

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