April 20, 2007 – Finesse Solutions, LLC, Santa Clara, CA,
a manufacturer of measurement and control solutions for life science
applications announced the formation of the TruLink Consortium. The stated goal
of this consortium, whose Founding Members include Finesse, OSIsoft and
MatrikonOPC, is to bring together best-in class equipment suppliers and life
science industry leading end-users to facilitate the successful implementation
of an open standard by which hardware and software units can communicate with
and/or control one another.

TruLink has been developed to leverage the high throughput
of OPC with the flexibility of XML.That having been said, the TruLink standard
utilizes XML documents to define the structure anddata availability of TruLink
enabled units while OPC connections are dynamically created betweenthese units
to pass control instructions and data. At the center of the TruLink standard
are itsthree defining roles; 1) Create a standard definition of OPC links
between pieces of equipment. 2)Ensure S88 Batch compliance and Validation
support. 3) Enables dynamic connection betweenOPC servers automatically when
data or control is required thereby allowing multiple units to usecommon
equipment via arbitration.

An example of a TruLink enabled application in the life
sciences would be for a bioreactor controllerto be able to receive a glucose
measurement from a chemical analyzer, based on that measurementthen send a
request for a viability measurement to a cell viability analyzer and based on
the informationreceived from these two devices automatically change the feed
control strategy to the bioreactor asneeded, when needed. Currently this is not
achievable due to the inability of these devices to receivecontrol instructions
such as defined in the TruLink open standard.

“We as best-in class suppliers to the life science industry
have an obligation to work together to overcometechnological hurdles that face
our industry,” says Larry West, Executive V.P. of Sales and Marketingat Finesse
and Executive Director of the TruLink Consortium. “With the participation of
industryleading end-users we are assured that these technological hurdles will
be clearly defined and ultimatelyovercome,” said West.

About Finesse
California based Finesse is a global leader in process measurement and control
technologies. Ourfamily of products – TruBio™, TruLogic™, TruViu™, TruCell™, TrupH™,
and TruDO™, provide comprehensivesolutions for measurement and control
processes in the biotech and pharmaceutical industries.