Whether you work with chromatography occasionally or on a daily basis, Empower™ 2 Software will help you be productive in running separations and analyzing results. Empower 2 Software simplifies how you collect and report chromatography test results by letting you choose the user interface that matches the way you work. Whether you work at a pharmaceutical company concerned about data security, compliance and validation, or have a chemical analysis application where ease of use and high system availability are top priorities, Empower 2 can help your lab perform more efficiently.

Bringing You Closer to the Right Results
Empower 2 is Waters’ flagship chromatography data software (CDS) package for advanced data acquisition, management, processing, reporting and distribution.

Four intuitive interfaces help anyone in your lab work better – you’re up and running in just a few clicks.

• It’s quick and easy to store and retrieve chromatography data using an embedded, relational database.
• Take advantage of more precise peak integration calculations with ApexTrack™ algorithm.
• Easily control Waters ACQUITY UPLC™ and Alliance® HPLC systems as well as third-party HPLC and GC systems.
• Enhanced detection capabilities are available when using Waters mass detectors or the Waters 2996 Photodiode Array Detector.
• Scalable, modular architecture allows seamless growth from a single workstation to an enterprise-wide system.
• Designed for a data-secured regulatory lab environment – three clicks to compliance.

Empower 2 Software allows you to multi-task without using multiple software packages. You can acquire data and control a variety of instruments, including HPLC, UPLC™ and GC. You can apply advanced detection techniques such as MS and PDA without outsourcing to a third party. You can deploy applications such as dissolution, method validation, integrated chemical structures and polymer analysis.

Maximize Productivity with Empower 2

Empower™ 2 Software represents a fundamental shift in UPLC™, HPLC and LC/MS system usability. Our CDS software is equipped with unique interface options designed for every user in your lab – regardless of their task or skill level.

The Empower 2 QuickStart is a single-window access point for data collection, processing and reporting. Use a wizard to set up methods and run assays without confusion. You can navigate the entire Empower 2 environment from one screen, including instrument control, a real-time view of plotted data, and a work area to look at raw data.

Process Results More Accurately with ApexTrack

ApexTrack effectively detects and integrates shouldered peaks, providing more reliable detection of low-level peaks on noisy or sloping baselines. Peak detection using curvature criteria is much more sensitive than the slope criteria used in traditional integration, and requires less adjustment of integration parameters. In the end, you get more accurate results.

Custom Calculations

Empower 2 enables you to run custom calculations that you would otherwise export to a spreadsheet to reduce raw data into the format you need to make critical decisions.

Simply use a wizard to set up your parameters – such as setting a percentage threshold that the peak area of an active component should not exceed – and the software will run the appropriate formula to separate and summarize your data.

Share Reports

With results and reports stored centrally within the same database, you can more easily share information with colleagues.

• Create combined summary reports across labs, instruments and projects, without concern for where data was acquired or processed.
• With just one click, you can create a PDF or email your report to colleagues.
• Labs can pass methods and information electronically, and access information on the system from any client computer.

Compliance

Maintaining regulatory compliance is one of the biggest challenges of your job. Now with Empower 2 Software, it’s the last thing you need to worry about. Waters’ compliant-ready software provides a simple interface to manage CDS systems within a regulated environment.

Step-by-step guidelines are provided to assist your Empower 2 administrator in setting up your system to comply with the FDA Electronic Records and Electronic Signatures Rule (21 CFR Part 11) and/or with cGMP/GLP, GAMP, GALP, ISO 9000 or other regulatory standards.

• Empower 2 automatically creates secured and time-stamped audit trails to independently record the date and time of any operator entry that creates, modifies or deletes a record.
• Multiple-level password security is set for each action – from assigning access privileges, to setting audit trails, to regulating new projects and other policies.
• Secure system sign-on ensures that only valid users are able to access the system.

You can also review reports and apply your electronic signature to results. Empower 2 mimics the process for applying and reviewing paper signatures: during the signature process, PDFs are created that look exactly as you would expect paper forms to look.

Empower 2 Software qualification can be enhanced with our advanced qualification technology, ConnectionsAQT.

Enhanced CDS Data Management

From custom calculations to final reports, Empower™ 2 Software manages all your data needs and makes your lab more productive. No matter what type of lab you're working in, you focus your time on science, not on software tuning or file management.

The strength of Empower 2 is its embedded relational database.

• It collects and stores test results, automatically linking instrument and sample processing method with each result.
• It connects that data with the identity of the operator using the computer system.
• Each operator entry is automatically marked with a data and time stamp for each executed function.

Technology for a Growing IT Infrastructure

Flexible. Scalable. Built with software industry standards. Empower 2 Software is designed to help you accomplish your lab’s business objectives while meeting the requirements of your IT department.

Whether you need to run a single personal workstation, support a small group of scientists, or support a network for the entire lab or organization, Empower 2 offers a configuration that will meet your needs – without compromising system availability, functionality, or performance.

Empower 2 features a distributed architecture. The user sees a single application, but the software operates with separate components for processing and reporting, for the embedded relational database (built with Oracle technology), and for instrument acquisition and control.

• Empower 2 Enterprise is configured with the database on its own server, for optimized performance, including load balancing and simplified system management.
• Security is handled at the application level so you don’t have to monitor file access on the operating system

Lab space can be utilized for instruments without giving up valuable bench space for computers. The Enterprise solution can be scaled up or down, as needed to include any number of instruments and users.

Enterprise Options for Empower 2

Empower™ 2 Software Enterprise Options address advanced CDS needs of networked, enterprise environments, including data management and automated method validation management.

Enterprise Data Manager (EDM)

Empower 2 Enterprise Data Manager (EDM) is an enterprise option designed for networked environments that offers enhanced data management capabilities for chromatographic results. It provides automated project archive capabilities with advanced archive logic. Fully configurable, EDM scales from a single lab to the global enterprise without major modifications to your existing IT infrastructure. Empower 2 EDM provides access to CDS reports and data via a web browser — enabling Quality Assurance staff to review and approve electronic reports without additional software.

Method Validation Manager (MVM)

Empower 2 Method Validation Manager (MVM) allows you to perform chromatographic method validation, from protocol planning through final reporting, within one application. Capabilities include storage of your method validation SOP requirements in Empower 2 so that Empower 2 can automatically guide you through the method validation workflow, calculate method validation results, determine if the data adheres to your SOP requirements and if the results are within specification, and generate custom reports — all while managing the data in a secure, audit trailed, compliant environment.

Standard Options Expand your CDS Capabilities

Empower 2 Software uses a versatile switch-on approach to adding options to your system. Most application options are already included in the software, and simply have to be activated. Likewise, Empower 2’s modular system architecture allows you to easily add on and control new instruments such as advanced detectors.

Liquid Chromatography (HPLC and UPLC)

Waters is the only company in the LC instrumentation industry that offers an end-to-end system solution for chromatography, including software. Empower 2 Software controls and processes data for our HPLC and UPLC™ instruments. Our software also manages and collects data from third-party HPLC instruments.

Gas Chromatography (GC)

Multi-tasking is one of Empower 2's most attractive features: Our software works with a wide range of separation and detection technologies, including gas chromatography instruments. Empower 2 can control up to four GC systems, including third-party GCs, from one workstation. Empower 2 saves all of your configurations and method parameters to its database for full documentation.

Mass Spectrometry (MS)

With Empower 2, you don't have to be a mass spectrometry expert to get MS answers quickly and easily. Empower 2 enables you to control Waters LC/MS systems in a routine lab environment. The software’s comprehensive data management capabilities provide for enhanced MS data interaction with the integration of a chemical structure database. The result: greater flexibility and reporting — all within the same software interface.

Photo Diode Array (PDA)

Combining Empower 2 with a Waters PDA detection system lets you acquire, store, and retrieve single wavelength data, multi-wavelength data, complete spectra — or all three. Built-in advanced mathematical algorithms let you check peak purity and see the finest spectral details. You can also merge PDA and MS data from a single injection for a detailed investigation of any particular sample and its unknowns.

Chemical Structures

The Empower 2 Chemical Structures option allows you to place chemical structures on your spectral and chromatographic plots. You can also fully document and retrieve structural information related to your analyses, providing clarity to your chromatographic data and efficiency to your processes.

As with any information stored in the Empower 2 database, when structural information is stored with your chromatographic data, you can then search and retrieve that data. The combination of separation information with chemical structures provides a complete solution for the chromatography laboratory.

In addition to the Chemical Structures option, an Advanced Chemical Structures option is offered through a partnership with Advanced Chemistry Development (ACD Labs). The Advanced Chemical Structures option includes an Empower 2-enabled version of ACD’s ChemSketch structure drawing software that enables you to create and edit chemical structures directly from Empower 2.

With ChemSketch, scientists can easily draw molecules in a chemistry-oriented interface. Substructure searching is another useful tool to use when looking for similar or related compounds in your database. Retrieving information based on similar functionality to previously studied compounds can provide useful information that can save you time while developing new chromatographic methods.

Dissolution

Empower 2 Software's Dissolution option provides the fastest and most accurate way to ensure the integrity of your HPLC dissolution testing methods and results, helping increase lab productivity. By combining Empower software with a Waters Alliance Dissolution System, you can manage the analysis and reporting for everything from pill drop to the production and distribution of test results, and control multiple dissolution baths from a single analytical system or gain simultaneous control of multiple systems from a single workstation.

Gel Permeation Chromatography for Polymer Analysis

Analytical and polymer chemists performing gel permeation chromatography (GPC), polymer, or polymer additive analysis need to effectively collect, manage and report GPC/V data. Empower 2 Software’s GPC option is the most versatile software developed for polymer characterization.

This software utilizes all the capabilities of Empower 2, plus provides features specifically for managing GPC/V results including:

• Wide variety of calibration routines
• Quick setup of integration parameters
• Viewing, editing and reviewing results from same page
• Two solutions for axial dispersion correction
• Use of the entire detector data region
• Capture of molecular weights and quantitative branching information

Method Validation

Empower 2 Software’s Method Validation option performs extensive validation assessment. After a particular method validation protocol is carried out, it automatically calculates parameters such as linearity, range, accuracy, repeatability, intermediate precision, detection limits, quantitation limits, sensitivity and robustness. Working interactively with Empower 2, the direct transfer of chromatography data without doing manual data entry ensures a rapid and efficient validation of chromatography methods.

System Suitability

Whether you’re working in a non-regulated industrial lab, or in a highly controlled pharmaceutical lab, you're concerned about monitoring overall system performance. The Empower System Suitability option verifies the functional performance of each instrument component of the system, and verifies the performance of the entire analytical procedure — validating your method parameters as necessary — including sample preparation.

This option performs tracking and trending, as well as statistical analysis — to measure against regulatory standards, or against internal historical performance, as appropriate — and can be set to notify you if your system is operating outside of your defined limits.

This option, for use in LC, GC, IC, CIA/CE, GPC/V, PDA and MS, ensures that your system is working within acceptable limits. It's the fastest and easiest way to be confident in the accuracy of your methods and results.

Extend Compliance with Advanced Qualification Technology (AQT)

Used by a Waters Compliance Service Specialist, Connections AQT is an advanced technology that automates the qualification process for Empower Software, Alliance Systems, Millennium Software, and SAT/IN Modules.