UK-based science-based service company LGC has been selected as the UK partner in a new European initiative to provide industrial clients with direct access to a network of information - drawn from complex chemical data - on chemical measurement and data handling.

The Virtual Institute for Chemometrics and Industrial Metrology (VICIM), comprised of 13 organisations from all over Europe and partly funded through the EU 5th Framework Programme, is essentially a 'one stop shop' network for chemometrics and metrology.

Metrology aims to assure good quality data, through establishing uncertainty, traceability and validation whereas chemometrics focuses on the development and application of new data analysis tools for the efficient extraction of relevant information from large quantities of good quality data.

Dr Steve Ellison at LGC and UK contact for the network said: "It is very exciting to be involved in this initiative. Modern chemical measurement technology provides increasingly large amounts of complex data.

The potential value of harnessing that data to provide meaningful information on complex systems is particularly relevant in a regulatory context, for example, in pharmaceuticals or environmental monitoring, or in process control where many factors affect product quality."

According to a Ellison LGC will provide knowledge in method validation and uncertainty assessment to the network.

VICIM, an EU Virtual Institute, is led by Professor DL Massart, head of the department of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels.