Fast-growing Qualio to open Dublin office

Life sciences quality management firm will employ up to 30 here, writes John Reynolds

QUALIO, a life sciences quality management software firm founded by a former chemist from Cork, is to open an office in Dublin and employ up to 30 people here over the next two years.

The move is on the back of fast-growing sales in the US. The new recruits are part of a plan to hire 60 people in total by 2020, founder Robert Fenton said.

Customers include medical device manufacturers, and therapeutics and contract manufacturers in the pharmaceuticals and life sciences sector in 80 countries. About 80pc of new customers are in the US, however.

“We plan to add up to 30 people to our team over the next 12 months to support our continued growth, and 60 by 2020,” said Fenton.

“Just over half of the recruits will be based in the Dublin office. The roles will predominantly be in engineering, with some customer-service functions.

“Dublin is where it all started for us in 2014, and while we’ve expanded to San Francisco, Dublin will always be our home,” he added.

“The combination of a talented, motivated workforce and Ireland’s deep expertise in the health and medical space make it a natural hub as we scale.

“We started Qualio to help teams building life-saving products to get to market quickly and scale successfully. We unite their quality team, tools, and data so that they can become quality driven. In doing this, we’re fortunate to work with lots of amazing companies.”

He said those companies produce “everything from traditional medical devices, to machine learning for medical imaging and novel gene therapies for rare diseases”. Fenton added that “expanding our team in Dublin is key to helping us grow”.

Industry analysts say the US Food and Drug Administration is partly driving companies in the pharma and life sciences sectors to improve how they manage quality control, boosting their interest in adopting cloud-based technology such as Qualio’s.

Increased visibility provides greater efficiency and reduces the risk of quality issues, which can be extremely costly, sometimes resulting in product development delays, financial penalties or lawsuits. Some firms previously used paperwork and spreadsheets to manage their quality processes.

Fenton — from Mitchelstown in Co Cork — studied pharmacy at UCC, and worked as a locum pharmacist and interned at pharma giant Pfizer, where he got an insight into quality systems while helping with a complex update of them.