Focus is an advanced process optimization software product from BergenShaw International.  Focus enables high throughput laboratories to optimize their research processes, thus increasing their yield, improving their throughput, and lowering their overall operating cost.

Gene sequencing, gene expression, genotyping, proteomics, biomolecular screening, and other high throughput life science research processes are very complex, with many process steps, each of which has many potentially yield-affecting factors associated with it.  In addition, these processes are often changed to reflect the changing needs of the research they support.  When a process yield changes, it impacts both the speed and the cost of that research making it essential to quickly identify when a change has occurred and to pinpoint the cause and quantify the impact of all yield changes.

Once configured, Focus automatically analyzes the performance of all individual factor sets (individual factors such as libraries, machines, personnel, reagents, etc. and combinations of factors such as Library=Human7 and Machine=Thermocycler41 and Operator=JTS) associated with the research process, identifies when a yield change has occurred, identifies all yield effecting factor sets, quantifies the impact of each, and notifies the appropriate personnel when performance anomalies exceed user specified criteria.  Since Focus identifies the factor sets associated with all yield losses and with all yield gains, it is an ideal tool for optimizing new research processes coming on-line and for maintaining optimal performance from existing ones.