Editor’s note: WRAL TechWire and the Council for Entrepreneurial development are partnering to present a series of profiles and Q&As featuring companies startups and emerging companies participating in the CED’s annual Life Science conference coming up Feb. 28-March 1 in Raleigh. The latest profile is VCA-Plus.

VCA-Plus, Inc.

  • Web site: http://www.vca-plus.com            
  • CEO: Peter Schaefer
  • Contact: pschaefer@vca-plus.com
  • Sub-sector: Healthcare IT/Digital Health                                                           
  • HQ: Raleigh, NC
  • Year Founded: 2015

COMPANY PROFILE

VCA-Plus, Inc. is a start-up company that provides Vicos™, an extensible, cloud-based platform for sharing and executing script-based, validated applications for medical research study data management and analysis to CROs and biotech or pharmaceutical companies. When working with strategic partners we will cloud-enable their applications for lower cost-of-ownership. And we are developing our own cloud-based products that solve common scientific and statistical data analysis and reporting tasks. Our applications are validated on the server (reducing dramatically the required validation effort) and support required data standards (specifically, mandatory CDISC-defined standards for non-clinical and clinical trial data).

FOUNDERS/MANAGEMENT TEAM

  • Peter Schaefer, CEO
  • Dan Gilroy, CTO
  • Debra Fontana, COO

KEY MILESTONES TO DATE

  • Funding: Self-funded
  • Completed several application demos/PoC, March 2016
  • Completed server-based platform development, July 2016
  • Will complete first product on the Vicos platform, Q1 2017

Backed by: CED, SCORE

Q&A

  • What is the primary pain point you are seeking to address?

Reduce the effort for validating software products (lower cost of ownership) and support collaboration across organizations through features integrated in commonly used software applications.

  • What sets your company apart? What’s the “secret sauce”?

The unique combination of domain / market knowledge and technology experience of our founder team. And the market opportunity from changes in study data requirements based on recent FDA regulations.

  • Why should investors be interested in your company? What is the potential market size?

The market size for scientific and statistical analysis tools in life sciences is estimated at about $250 million. The market size for our initial non-compartmental PK analysis tool is estimated at about $50 million.