Chris Cera, CEO, Arcweb Technologies

Chris Cera, CEO of Arcweb Technologies, spoke with Invest: about the company’s rapid growth in digital health. With the launch of its open-source Arcwell platform, Arcweb is transforming how clinical research and care are delivered with large healthcare providers. “It’s disrupting the entire workstream on many different levels,” said Cera.

Reflecting on the past year, what have been the most significant changes for Arcweb Technologies?

Last year, we launched a new product called Arcwell. It has an open-source business model, meaning that a lot of the intellectual property is given away to the public or to other businesses. We now have three implementations of the platform with major U.S. healthcare providers, and our fourth is coming soon. 

Launching a new product and bringing it to market for customers has been our most recent exciting development.

What differentiates Arcweb Technologies from its competitors?

We’re a very engineering-focused organization, right now that means building Artificial Intelligence (AI), and we are committed to delivering high-quality products on time. A big part of that is managing expectations from the very beginning through to project completion. We are very good at producing accurate estimates and managing expectations.

We’ve been in business for almost 15 years, worked with over 100 companies, and completed more than 200 projects.

What are some of the key challenges you’ve faced, and how do you approach them?

We try to set expectations early and communicate them effectively, but that often can’t happen in a single room with a single individual. It requires a broader communication strategy.

A lot of it comes down to financial expectations, especially given the complexity of a heavy engineering process. Having the expertise to produce accurate estimates with clearly presented assumptions and walking through the different stages from start to finish early on is key to effectively communicating and managing those expectations.

Which sectors or industries have shown the most growth for Arcweb in the past year, and how is the company evolving its offerings to serve them?

We focus on digital health companies, providers, and payers. The Arcwell platform we launched includes a clinical research component, which has also positioned us to play a significant role in clinical research and performance improvement projects at large health systems.

How is Arcweb capitalizing on the healthcare AI surge, particularly in predictive analytics and remote monitoring?

Leveraging AI happens at many different levels. In clinical care, much of the focus is on governance to ensure that whatever is produced is both safe and effective. But AI’s impact extends beyond clinical applications; it’s reshaping the entire healthcare delivery workflow.

For years, software development meant teams of engineers hand-coding applications line by line. Now, in a significant portion of our projects, AI is generating much of the code, with our engineers reviewing and auditing it. This shift represents a completely different workflow, changing how projects are built, what they cost, how long they take, and how they’re maintained. It’s disrupting nearly every aspect of the process.

These major transformations naturally spark both curiosity and anxiety. That’s why staying curious and open-minded is so important. Being aware of what’s happening now and paying attention are part of the game.

In what ways has the demand for healthcare and AI services evolved, and how has your team responded to meet those shifting needs?

Early in the year, a new presidential administration took office, and we saw CEOs of many major publicly traded tech companies publicly state that they would stop hiring engineers and might even replace them with AI. That created a significant chilling effect in the engineering job market, felt across the country and around the world.

Now, as we enter the third quarter, it feels like there’s a lot of pent-up demand. Things have picked up considerably. This isn’t necessarily unique to Philadelphia; it’s part of a broader trend, with a lot happening in rapid succession over the past few months.

What are the most significant challenges you are currently seeing from your clients, and how are you addressing them?

One of the pain points this year was that everything was frozen for six months for many of our customers. Now, everything needs to move very quickly. It’s unusual for us to be this busy over the summer, but that’s the reality right now.

We’re also seeing a growing understanding of how organizations can utilize AI. There’s definitely more investment being made in that category.

What partnerships or collaborations are you exploring to enhance your service offerings or expand access to care?

Right now, OpenAI is one of the leading providers of AI technology to companies and consumers. Their tools are distributed through Microsoft, and many health systems already use Microsoft cloud technologies as part of their infrastructure. This has led to the rapid adoption of OpenAI within some of these organizations. Their ability to satisfy compliance requirements to protect electronic patient health information was handled relatively quickly.

What are the top priorities for Arcweb Technologies over the next two to three years?

I have specific goals around expanding deployments of our Arcwell platform, as well as advancing our internal adoption of AI. I believe much of what we do today can be further automated, and there’s a strong push to increase our use of AI across the entire project lifecycle, from the early stages of the sales process through delivery and project closeout.