Lab Rat or Button Monkey? » Roche

Roche Strengthens African Manufacturing

dapo — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 14:07:10 +0000

This story appeared in www.medicalnewstoday.com

It is always good to see companies promoting health before their bottom line. Africa and other developing countries can’t afford Western prices for vital drugs to combat HIV and other illnesses.

For more information about Roche and HIV you can try this link

or type in this address:

http://www.roche-hiv.com

Roche web sites

dapo — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 02:04:51 +0000

I have been looking at various Roche sites. I wanted to have a look at their chemistry information, as the hospital I work in is about to start a rather large tender process.

Knowing Roche is a rather large company with numerous divisions, I headed straight for the diagnostics division which can be found here. I did like the approach of the site asking whether you are a patient etc to direct you to the appropriate site/subsection. I find this a far better navigation tool for a site for general public access as it leaves little room for misunderstaning.

That said, I am a little disappointed that clicking on the “I’m a Hospital Lab Professional” link takes me to a page with a link to another page, the Cobas site. If you want to go to the Cobas site, why not link directly?

Having had a look around for some chemistry info, I did find a section on their equipment (here) but regretably the site is American. It is a shame the uk site couldn’t mirror the information. After searching for a while, I couldn’t find any method information unlike some of the other companies in the same field.

P.S. The person on this site does remind me of Ugly Betty

Roche

dapo — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 03:35:04 +0000

I haven’t managed to find some technical information from Roche, but I did find this site:

http://www.diavant.com/diavant/CMSFront.html

It seems to be geared to a higher level than Labtestsonline so I’m guessing it is aimed at a more medical audience than Labtestsonline which is aimed at the patient. A quick nose around seems to suggest that it’s pretty good.

The future?

dapo — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:11:13 +0000

I attended a lecture at University of Westminster dealing with micro array technology with regards to Chemical Pathology in 1999 or 2000. At the time it seemed very promising. The lecture was performed by an academic but the underlying technology implementation was from Roche. It seems that this approach was subsequently mothballed. At the time, I heard it was for commercial reasons, as Roche were pushing a different immunoanalyser.

It now seems that Roche are back in the game…

http://www.roche.com/home/media/med_div/med_dia/med_dia_2007/med_dia_2007-01-15.htm

I believe this reference will provide some background:

Ekins, R. (1998) Ligand assays: from electrophoresis to miniaturized microarrays. Clin Chem, 44:9, p. 2015-2030

Or this link.

http://www.clinchem.org/cgi/content/full/44/9/2015