The two workstations, designed primarily for solution-focused life science and clinical research markets, extend the company's ability to address applications requiring low-to-mid range throughput capabilities.
The Biomek 3000 workstation is suited for academic and forensic laboratories, while the NX workstation is ideally suited for biotech, pharmaceutical, and molecular pathology laboratories conducting research for drug discovery and development.
Elias Caro, President of Beckman Coulter's Biomedical Research Division said: "Beckman Coulter's goal is to provide customers with solutions, not just instrumentation."
"The workstations are critical elements in our strategy to expand our customer base by bringing automation to bear on lower throughput applications."
The new automated workstations increase sample throughput in low- to mid-range liquid handling applications, improving the accuracy and precision of assays. This capability allows life science and specialty testing researchers to focus on results and decision-making, rather than performing routine and mundane, time-consuming, sample preparation tasks.
Both new systems provide a smaller footprint to Beckman Coulter's high-throughput Biomek FX liquid handling system. The Biomek 3000 and NX workstations share a common software platform with the Biomek FX system, enabling users to transfer methods between platforms.
In addition, the Biomek software enables users to meet 21 CFR part 11 conditions - an FDA requirement for submitting documentation in electronic form and the criteria for approved electronic signatures. Both workstations can perform validation assays in a regulated environment and the software can be set to different user accounts and permissions, track revision control and enable electronic signatures. It also requires users to register any change to methods and stores all versions.
"With the addition of these two new systems, Beckman Coulter now offers a full range of liquid handling solutions, meeting throughput requirements of low, medium and high throughput customers."
"We are now well positioned to capture a larger portion of the $670 million (€558m) liquid handling market," said Caro.
"The flexibility of these solutions is what makes them unique. They are small enough for use in laminar flow hoods for applications requiring a controlled environment, and robust enough to reliably handle daily sample preparation protocols, while delivering reproducible results," Caro added.
Both systems are now available for shipment.