Software for Health
Adlershof’s arivis AG develops applications for the life science sector
The whole life sciences sector now heavily relies on effective and secure information processing. But off-the-shelf IT solutions are usually not helpful. Software specialists such as those from arivis AG are thus highly sought after.
Modern microscopes provide researchers with high-resolution pictures of up to one gigabyte in size – per minute. This can quickly result in unfathomable amounts of data full of information slumbering within which could lead scientists towards new chemical agents and therapy approaches. However, this treasure trove of data has to be visualised, distributed and analysed. There is no off-the-shelf solution for this purpose. Instead, specialised software is required, which is being developed by IT companies such as arivis AG.
These software developers focus entirely on applications for the life science sector – pharma, biotechnology, medical equipment and plant protection. “We support researchers in authorisation processes and quality control, also because our software helps them to meet strict regulatory requirements,” explains founder and chairman of the board Andreas Suchanek.
Among other things, he has merged together the sister companies arivis GmbH, scarabTEC GmbH and Mission3 Inc., and changed the name to arivis AG, Unterschleißheim. It is the development team that is based in Adlershof, working on the IT flanking scientific progress in medicine. There are further offices in Rostock and Phoenix/Arizona. “We cater to a niche market,” says Suchanek – for customers in more than two dozen countries all over the world.
While there are also big players such as Bayer, Roche or Genentech among them, Suchanek clearly positions his company as the first address for medium-sized pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Among his customers are Abbott, Grünenthal, Aristo and Dragenopharm as well as research institutes like ETH Zurich, the Medical University of Vienna or the University of Rostock.
As a highly specialised provider of IT solutions for the pharmaceutical industry, the company cannot and does not wish to compete with industry leaders like SAP, Microsoft or Oracle, as Suchanek elaborates: “What makes us stand out is a high degree of competence for interfaces between various systems, modules and components, which we utilise to integrate, for example, inventory management systems or enterprise solutions of large IT-providers into our own solutions.” This secures access of the company with its 35 employees to major customers. There is also a demand for information management systems which help to reliably register side effects of drugs and support the complex authorisation process for a new pharmaceutical – which often involves electronically transmitting reports with up to 500,000 pages to the authorities.
The demands are always increasing and so does the demand for software support. Suchanek realises this when looking at the key figures of his venture: it is growing annually by 30 percent, and so he is in good spirits that he will achieve the sales performance goal, targeted two years ago, of ten million euro in 2017.
By Chris Löwer for Adlershof Special