Danaher has acquired IDBS, a U.K.-based scientific informatics company, to round out its life sciences portfolio. The company hopes that IDBS’ data management, analytics and modeling platforms will accelerate the pace of drug discovery and development.
Danaher’s businesses span environmental and applied solutions, dental, diagnostics and life sciences. IDBS will join companies such as Beckman Coulter Life Sciences and Molecular Devices, both of which make scientific instruments for research and drug discovery.
“IDBS’ informatics solutions integrate insights derived using scientific instruments from various vendors and from many different disciplines, enabling better and faster scientific and business decisions ultimately affording patients faster and better therapies,” said Rainer Blair, Danaher executive vice president, in the statement. “IDBS opens a new generation of vendor agnostic information-based digital services for Danaher and makes the digital lab a reality.”
“By linking the IDBS knowledge management platform with their comprehensive instrument coverage it will create a ‘data spine’ that connects instruments, creating opportunities for new information-based services and the realization of the digital lab of the future,” said IDBS CEO Neil Kipling.
Danaher’s most recent acquisition was the diagnostics maker Cepheid, announced in September and closed in November last year. It followed a $13.1 billion deal to pick up Pall Corporation in May and a $30 million buyout of Applied Spectral Imaging in 2015.