Aboca

“If they so wish, humans can find remedies for all their ills in nature.” These are the words of Tuscan entrepreneur Valentino Mercati, who, in the spring of 1978, founded Aboca – a company that, by combining centuries-old botanical knowledge with state-of-the-art scientific research, has developed a range of natural plant-based healthcare products that meet the highest regulatory standards.

Aboca manages the creation of its products at every stage. It has 1,700 hectares of land that is used to grow more than 60 species of medicinal plants based on organic farming methods. These plants are transformed into around 100,000 kilograms of dried extracts that – after extensive research and development – form the basis of products that are exported to 24 countries worldwide.

Aboca’s fusion of nature and science is unique: it consistently invests in clinical studies and makes 100% of its products with natural ingredients. However, the processes involved in analyzing natural ingredients, validating their medicinal properties through clinical trials, and navigating stringent regulations are not straightforward. They require an advanced, data-driven approach. That’s why the company has adopted the BIOVIA ONE Lab solution from Dassault Systèmes.

“In the past, we lost a lot of data after experiments,” said Paola Paoloni, IT manager at Aboca. “Our scientists used various tools to record experimental data, stock consumables and reagents, create and complete requests, and also generate reports. These types of processes did not allow us to archive data during their execution. Now, with BIOVIA, we can transform that data into powerful information.”

Prior to implementing BIOVIA ONE Lab, Aboca’s scientists recorded the results of their experiments on paper – an outdated practice that wasn’t fit for purpose. Without a central repository of information, collaboration was difficult, and data-driven decisions were impossible.

“Innovation is key to our success,” said Alessandro Buzzini, Aboca’s director of IT. “For over 40 years, we have focused on identifying complex molecular elements in nature to improve human health. This requires extensive research and the ability to process large volumes of structured and unstructured data from our laboratory experiments. We needed a solution to help us efficiently capture, organize, collaborate on and analyze this data, while ensuring regulatory compliance.”

After reviewing the market, Aboca felt that BIOVIA was the only solution that offered the capabilities it expected.

“Both scalable and compliant with the demands of the pharmaceutical industry, we found that BIOVIA ONE Lab would help us drive digital transformation in our research and development processes,” Buzzini said. “Meanwhile, the solution could also help us to improve quality and regulatory management through better data and document management.”

Aboca began its implementation by defining the departments where obsolete procedures and systems will be replaced with the new integrated environment. Today, 100% of the data from Aboca’s experiments is captured electronically and stored in a standardized format, while lab equipment is digitally managed directly from the BIOVIA ONE Lab solution. This has delivered multiple benefits.

“Now we have a standardized process for recording and storing laboratory data,” Buzzini said. “The enhanced data management capabilities offered by BIOVIA bring a certain level of automation and has significantly improved our data quality while reducing errors.”

Using BIOVIA ONE Lab, Aboca has also been able to improve its sustainability credentials, both by integrating materials management, and by enabling more virtual experimentation.

“We now have a paperless laboratory and can use data to virtually simulate many of our experiments,” Buzzini said. “This minimizes materials consumption and waste, and leads to faster innovation cycles, accelerating the discovery of new natural healthcare products.”

With all laboratory scientists working seamlessly within the same integrated environment, collaboration has also improved.

“The majority of our scientists consider BIOVIA’s solution essential, increasing efficiency in both the laboratory and business as a whole,” Buzzini said.  

This is just the start of a long collaboration between Aboca and Dassault Systèmes. The company plans to leverage BIOVIA ONE Lab to standardize the way it collects data across all company processes. This approach will help it to easily visualize and understand data in analytics packages, leading to better and faster decisions.

“With a comprehensive repository of all research data, we will improve the power of information for the business,” Buzzini said. “Presented in a visual format, data will be easy to interpret and help support decision making.”

In the longer term, Aboca plans to embrace Dassault Systèmes’ product lifecycle management (PLM) capabilities to create a fully digital thread from research to commercialization.

“As a result, everything we do will be digitally transformed and informed by data,” Buzzini said. “This will further improve our efficiency and sustainability, and strengthen our position in the market.” 

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