Chippenham-based data safeguarding specialist Arkivum has signed a deal with US giant Thermo Fisher Scientific to help manage the massive amounts of data generated by the equipment in life sciences companies.

“The life sciences industry is a key driver of big data applications, from molecular medicine to clinical trials. Compliance with regulatory requirements and internal best practices is a major and growing challenge,” said Guy Yaniv, CEO of Arkivum who joined in June last year. “Just storing data is no longer sufficient.”

Affordable digital scanning and sequencing technologies are creating a deluge of data. As this wave gathers pace, the consequences for IT departments are potentially catastrophic as they struggle to handle the safeguarding tasks associated with big data. Primary storage is rapidly depleted, backups and migrations become more taxing, and data integrity is threatened as a result. Arkivum helps companies store multiple copies of petabytes (1000TB) of data securely in disparate (but UK based) data centres.

“It is clear that there is a need for bioinformatics and IT solutions designed to ensure secure data governance”

 

“As an increasing amount of data is being generated in this era of precision medicine, it is clear that there is a need for bioinformatics and IT solutions designed to ensure secure data governance,” says Enzo Razzoli, leader of Field Services and Support for Thermo Fisher Scientific, a $17bn US company with 50,000 employees in 50 countries that provides technology such as the tester shown above to life science companies and laboratories developing new therapies and health equipment.

Arkivum was spun out of the University of Southampton in 2011 with over £2m of backing from Oxford Capital and the IP Group. It works with a growing number of industry verticals, from life sciences and healthcare with the Bristol Genetics Laboratory at Southmead hospital, financial services, education with the Janet academic network and digital heritage storage for the Tate gallery.

Arkivum is exhibiting at Digital Past 2017 in Newport on 15 and 16 February 2017, a two-day conference that showcases innovative digital technologies and techniques for data capture, interpretation and dissemination of the heritage of Wales, the UK and beyond.

Data Science Wales