Tech firm wins 10-year contract with Great Ormond Street trust

KEVIN SCOTT

Aridhia’s technology allows medical research to analyse massive volumes of data used in work on genes, for example, leading to breakthroughs.

across institutions and borders. And the challenge the business had overcome was to allow for more collaborators, with more data and more access as governance is getting stronger.

“Research funding demands collaborations across European countries and institutions,” he said. “You’re bringing hospitals together with pharma, with life sciences companies. [It leads to] larger data sets and more researchers on projects.”

Mr Roche said the contract was a very important one for the business, but added that every contract was important.

“Certainly it’s a great endorsement by a premier brand, someone who is globally

recognised that will be placing their trust in us for the next 10 years. It’s not like it’s one project, it’s every project so the significance can’t be underestimated.”

Aridhia was set up in 2007 by Scottish software entrepreneur David Sibbald and is based at University of Glasgow’s clinical innovation zone at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.

Mr Roche said he hoped the platform would have a disruptive effect on the market, acknowledging that healthcare has been slow to embrace the cloud, when compared to the likes of banking and retail.

He said this was for good reasons, but there was a shift beginning to take place.

“We hope this will have a good accelerating effect for us and that we can take advantage of that,” he said.

Mr Roche said two members of staff had been recruited directly to work with Great Ormond Street, based in London. He said it was difficult to ascertain the indirect benefit of staff numbers from cloud-based systems, but overall staff numbers at the company are approaching 50.

Its technology helps facilitate what is known as precision medicine, which uses the analysis of huge volumes of data covering genes, environment, and lifestyle to help researchers find breakthroughs in treatments for diseases such as cancer.