For Bernard Seiser, being vice-president of digital, data and IT at healthcare specialist AOP Health is the latest leg in a digital leadership journey that’s included some of the biggest names in the life sciences industry. He describes the opportunity to bring change to AOP as exciting.
“We are working in interesting times,” he says. “We’re doing a lot of things around digitisation. We are an attractive place to work. We have a clear vision. We want to grow and ensure that we meet the unmet needs of our patients.”
Founded in 1996, Vienna-based AOP Health is a pioneer in integrated therapies for rare diseases and critical care. Seiser says this focus means the company’s day-to-day activities differ from those of Europe’s other big pharmaceutical firms, many of which he’s worked for previously. What is similar, however, is the ever-growing importance of digital and data.
“AOP is a great environment to work in, especially in my role, because we have introduced a lot of changes, with big initiatives and digital transformational activities,” he says. “What excites me is the opportunity to shape the digital and IT landscape – improving how AOP works as an organisation. Being part of this transformation journey is super exciting.”
Establishing targets
Seiser joined AOP Health in September 2024. Having formerly worked at Bayer, he’s also held senior IT leadership roles at Johnson & Johnson, Hookipa Pharma and AstraZeneca. He reports to the AOP CEO.
“Initially, a lot of my role was about designing the digital and IT strategy,” says Seiser, reflecting on his 18 months with the company. “That responsibility took up probably 80% of my day-to-day job, where I was developing the digital strategy with the business.”
With the long-term direction agreed, his responsibilities are now more focused on rolling out initiatives, working with business functions to ensure digitisation targets are agreed, and engaging with his team to deliver the systems the organisation demands.
Seiser says the big difference between his role at AOP and Bayer, where he was head of commercial data solutions, is the breadth of impact. At Bayer, his transformation activities focused on data. At AOP, there’s an opportunity to drive change across the organisation.
“We’re not just covering data,” he says. “We’re also covering commercial, R&D, clinical, medical and so on. The scope is much broader and, outcome and impact-wise, it’s shaping the entire organisation, not just the data piece.”
More generally, Seiser describes the modern CIO role as a super-important position because it involves three critical topics, all of which are encompassed in his job title at AOP, that he says more or less set the direction for the entire organisation – digital, data and technology.
“Regardless of job title, I’ve always seen my role as a translator between technology and the business,” he says. “I’m not a marketeer. I don’t talk with patients, but I know how valuable digitalisation, data, and IT can be for the organisation. Sometimes, that knowledge is unavailable to the business. So, I see myself as a translator who can implement the things they require.”
Plotting the roadmap
Seiser says the broad aim of digital transformation at AOP is to ensure that solid, compliant and reliable IT foundations are in place. This foundation-building process was central to the strategy he designed when joining the firm, setting the general direction of travel through 2030. Now, he’s following the roadmap to reach that strategic destination.
“We identified that to grow further and ensure we were on track with our business vision at AOP, we needed to step up the game on digitisation and the IT backbone, which meant looking at everything holistically, from research to commercial,” he says.
“Regardless of job title, I’ve always seen my role as a translator between technology and the business”
Bernard Seiser, AOP Health
“That approach was about more than just implementing the right tools. It was also about ensuring that our digital transformation goes hand in hand with changing how we operate, how we look at data, how we look at governance and how we look at KPIs.”
While Seiser and his team are reaching key stage posts on the digital roadmap, he recognises that transformation is an ongoing journey. “When I came in, a couple of initiatives had already started because they’d identified that the ERP [enterprise resource planning] system was one of the core applications that needed to be revitalised,” he says.
“When we looked at other business applications, we identified other requirements that needed to be met. And this is what we’re focused on now – ensuring we deliver the results on our roadmap. And then, as a next step, we want to ensure that we maintain these systems and further develop them to make the best use of our investments.”
Transforming the business
Key transformation targets have already been achieved. AOP has moved its existing Navision ERP system to the Microsoft Dynamics platform. Seiser’s team has also implemented a data lakehouse based on Microsoft Fabrics technology.
“That’s a platform to store, organise, transform and utilise our data,” he says. “We’re integrating the ERP data. As other systems go live, we will also integrate that data into the lakehouse, so that we have a consolidated platform where we can extract analytics and generate insights and best practices.”
Seiser says AOP’s digital transformation continues apace. The business is exploring enterprise system refreshes in other areas, including planning, invoicing, and human resources. AOP is also implementing Veeva cloud-based technology. “The list is pretty long,” he says.
So, will that work take his team through to AOP’s 2030 digital strategy deadline?
“That’s correct, but we want to get there much sooner,” he says. “The ambition is to have everything done in a solid state by 2028. I would assume that we will have 80% to 90% of the core applications in place, and that they are interconnected and serviced in the right manner, so that we can then focus on the trendier areas, such as advanced analytics and AI.”
Seiser recognises emerging technology can create a step change in operations and workflows. AI, for example, is part of the Veeva cloud-based platform designed for the life sciences industry that his team is implementing. The organisation also uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot for approved tasks, such as assistance with writing emails.
The key message, says Seiser, is that generative and agentic services will only be implemented in his highly governed industry when the use case is proven and AI-enabled outputs are 100% accurate.
“We want to establish the foundations, stabilise them, optimise them and then use AI to develop our efforts,” he says.
Optimising operational activities
A key element of Seiser’s digital roadmap is the Veeva platform, the first stage of which went live recently. By standardising on life sciences applications in the Veeva Vault Platform, AOP hopes to streamline operations, eliminate silos, and accelerate the delivery of critical medicines to patients.
“When we started the digital strategy, we already knew that certain systems needed to be addressed sooner rather than later, and it became clear that Veeva could be a potential option to replace the core systems that we already have in place and also provide additional functionalities that we’ll be able to leverage in the future,” he says.
What I would like … is that people don’t spend too much time on menial activities, [and instead focus] on delivering better outcomes for the patient Bernard Seiser, AOP Health
AOP will use Veeva as part of a connected cloud strategy, bringing together its clinical research, development, quality and commercial teams. Rather than just providing a technology platform, Seiser hopes the integration and interoperability offered by Veeva’s platform will help to optimise internal processes and ways of working.
“It should make our lives easier in that sense that we can have established processes end-to-end on the Veeva platform, meaning there are no handovers, no breaks in the process, and everything has the same level of transparency and security in the same interface,” he says.
The first component, the Veeva Validation Management system – a paperless approach to validation – went live in March, with other capabilities set to follow soon. Seiser says the platform’s core functionalities will provide a base for further data-enabled change.
“Once these systems are in place, we’ll go back to the business and ask, ‘Okay, what else can you leverage to improve your ways of working? What feature, for example, could affect patient outcomes or the outreach to our patients?’” he says.
“So, this is the foundation phase. Then we will build on top of the foundation, optimise everything and then we’ll do the more interesting stuff, which means a deep dive into the AI capabilities of Veeva in particular, and leveraging these functionalities as well.”
Delivering better outcomes
Seiser reflects on his first 18 months at AOP and suggests his team has made solid progress towards its long-term goal – using all the organisation’s data in a compliant and secure manner.
“We want to generate insights that either make us quicker in terms of the processes we complete, be quicker in the market or grant quicker patient access to our products,” he says. “We’re already seeing that there are multiple ways digitisation will impact our ways of working and how we serve our customers.”
Between now and 2030, Seiser and his team will continue to refine the systems and services they provide to the rest of the business. Two years from now, he expects people across the organisation to benefit from a consolidated IT landscape that makes it easier for professionals to work effectively.
“We’ve talked about Microsoft, and we have Veeva in place now. There shouldn’t be thousands of applications you need to connect to, and where people have a different experience in each system. The processes should be established end-to-end, with no interruption, and traceability and transparency to monitor the processes,” he says.
“What I would like to have established for the business is that people don’t spend too much time on menial activities, doing extra work, which is actually not needed, but instead focus on what is important to them and to our organisation – having the patient in mind and focusing on delivering better outcomes for the patient.”
