BISHOP'S STORTFORD, U.K.—Research informatics company Dotmatics Ltd. has been tapped by FujiFilm Imaging Colorants Ltd. to provide data visualization solutions for their research teams.
Dotmatics' Vortex was selected to facilitate all the research data visualization required by FujiFilm, and the companies also have entered into a strategic relationship to further develop Vortex.
Dotmatics was founded in 2005 as a spin-out from a multinational pharmaceutical company and established to address the information needs of scientists in the biotech/pharma space.
According to Paul Wight, research associate at FujiFilm, Dotmatics provided a responsive service throughout his company's evaluation.
"A key point for us in product and service purchases is flexibility and Dotmatics proved extremely helpful in the way they sell and service their offering, making the selection decision an easy one," he says.
Steve Gallagher, CEO of Dotmatics, points out that his team looks forward to developing Vortex with FujiFilm to "keep up-to-date with their innovative research requirements." Gallagher points out that this marks the first time FujiFilm and Dotmatics have worked together.
"The partnership was founded following an evaluation of Vortex, which was undertaken by FujiFilm," he says. "Vortex was chosen over Spotfire and Miner 3D due to Vortex's inherent ease of extension, flexible licensing terms, advanced chemistry engine, sophisticated plotting and superior customer service Dotmatics provides."
Gallagher notes that Vortex has a number of advantages, including being chemically aware out of the box, including structure depiction and searching. The wealth of features Vortex provides allow researchers to quickly and intuitively mine, analyze, save and export their data, he says. It can import .sdf, .xls, .csy and other files or pull data from databases and Web services. Additionally, Vortex offers support for Windows, Mac and Linux and features direct export to Microsoft Powerpoint. It also can be customized with Python scripting and features charting and analysis. This dramatically increases efficiency when working with large data sets compared to standard spreadsheet tools, Gallagher says.
"Once data is loaded into Vortex a variety of plots can be quickly generated including; scatter, profile, radar, binned, 3D data cube, heat-map, plate viewer (for high-throughput screening data) and ternary plots," he explains. "In addition, data can be clustered according to any parameter including chemical structure. Trends in data can be easily discovered using box plots, trellis plots and trend lines or by sizing, coloring, labeling and grouping by any parameter in the data set."
According to Gallagher, the company has provided FujiFilm with licenses of Vortex, their data visualization solution.
"In addition to this, Dotmatics will work with FujiFilm to tailor the software to suit their needs. Dotmatics will provide advice and guidance with the scripting language (to allow easy addition of custom plots and data manipulation), support for database connections and integration of Vortex with their existing tools," he says.
One measure of success of Dotmatics' licensing agreements is growth, and the company seems to be experiencing that, opening a new office in the United States in response to its growing customer case across the country.
"This is a real milestone for Dotmatics," Gallagher notes. "In the last year or so, we have made huge progress in the U.S. market. While we have always been able to serve our customers well due to our products and low cost of ownership, we can now support our customers locally."
The new offices are located in the Del Mar region of San Diego, also known as the Biotech Beach, where more than 500 of the world's top pharma and biotechs are located.
