A Cardiff-based entrepreneur who traded medicine for specialist software development is launching a new health-tech startup, Scalantis, to transform the digital environment for laboratories.
Research suggests that up to 94% of spreadsheets included manual entry or formula errors (Frontiers of Computer Science (Poon et al, 2024), an ongoing issue that impacts positive, reliable outcomes for researchers, scientists, and patients alike.
Impact of this technology for laboratories and scientists in Wales, and beyond:
- Faster Results and data analysis: Speed up data processing for patients and research.
- Data Analysis and Research: Automating quality control and improving data reliability and reproducibility
- Reducing Risk: Eliminating the manual data entry errors that lead to wrong patient results, and risk entire fields of study being built on a foundation of miscalculated or mislabeled data.
- Accreditation Support: Helping UK labs meet rigorous UKAS standards.
- Local Growth: Committing to high-skilled tech job creation in the Cardiff capital region.
Entrepreneur Dr. Albert Tsanaclis completed his medical degree at the University of São Paulo, Brazil, but swiftly realised his true passion lay in the systems supporting healthcare rather than clinical practice. Transitioning into Health Informatics, Albert has spent years developing Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) for global tech firms and UK-based laboratories. Now, calling Cardiff his home, he is launching Scalantis to offer affordable and tailored digital solutions for laboratories, bespoke to how they work.
While the science inside UK labs and research groups is world-class, systems struggle to evolve with the day-to-day reality of the work. Many labs still rely on disconnected tools like Excel spreadsheets, which are prone to glitches and variations of usage – such as the famous research piece where software auto-converted gene names into calendar dates (Mark Ziemann et al, 2016) – and with trust placed in these systems,
“I have seen firsthand throughout my career how even the most brilliant researchers and scientists are grappling with basic, outdated systems that are prone to error,” says Albert Tsanaclis, Founder of Scalantis, “If a process relies on one person’s private spreadsheet, the system is without a doubt, fragile and certainly not future proof. When that person leaves or a team grows, you get training bottlenecks and, eventually, errors. We build our bespoke software with the user, ensuring consistency and transparency without forcing the scientist to change how they work.”
Albert settled in Cardiff in 2020, joining his extended family that has been rooted in the city for 40 years. Rather than working remotely for global giants, he is now focused on building a local business that supports the Welsh life sciences sector.
Based in Cardiff University and Cardiff and Vale University Health Board’s Medicentre location, an incubator for health-tech start-ups, Albert explains how his technology will transform the productivity of those working in the sector into robust software systems, improving efficiency, consistency, and long-term sustainability without disrupting established scientific and working practices.
“Wales – and Cardiff in particular – is the perfect base for a health-tech-startup like Scalantis,” Albert explains. “We aren’t just building software, we’re building a foundation for reliable research. Our five-year goal is to build the Scalantis team, and make Wales a role model for how complex health-tech systems should be designed.”
“We know we can do data better,” he says. “We know there is a world where data is processed efficiently, safely, and correctly, and that this will positively impact both the laboratories we work with and the people who rely on them.”
