About Vivaryum

Where it started

Vivaryum was born in a Melbourne-based laboratory where our founders — veterinary researchers and animal care managers — spent more time wrangling spreadsheets and reconciling uncontrolled notes than they did on the actual science. The systems available to research facilities were either generic document platforms repurposed for animal records, or expensive commercial solutions designed for pharmaceutical manufacturing, not academic research.

Neither category served the day-to-day reality of managing research animal colonies: tracking individual histories, maintaining SOP compliance, and providing auditable records that could stand up to institutional review.

The problem

Research animal records are critical — they underpin animal welfare decisions, ethical compliance, and data reproducibility. Yet many facilities manage them through a patchwork of spreadsheets, email threads, and paper-based logs. When records are scattered across uncontrolled documents, version history is lost, accountability blurs, and audits become exercises in reconstruction rather than verification.

The cost isn't just time. It's risk: compliance gaps, inconsistent care protocols, and the inability to trace decisions back to the people and records that shaped them.

Why Vivaryum

Vivaryum is built from the ground up for research animal management. Every feature is designed around the workflows of laboratory veterinarians and animal care teams:

• ·Full version history on every record — changes are never overwritten, giving you a permanent trail of what happened and when.
• ·Tamper-evident audit logging built to meet institutional compliance standards.
• ·Hierarchical record structures that mirror how facilities actually organise — facility, colony, group, individual.
• ·Role-based access control so administrators, veterinarians, researchers, and auditors each see exactly what they need.
• ·Free-form records with custom metadata fields — attach cage number, litter ID, or any key-value data to your records.
• ·Multi-target records so a single entry can link to multiple animals, groups, or colonies — no more duplicate documentation.
• ·Dashboard analytics with a contribution heatmap to visualise your team's activity at a glance across 12 weeks.

The team

We're a small team of laboratory veterinarians and researchers based in Melbourne. We built Vivaryum because we experienced the problems firsthand and knew the right tool could make a real difference for animal welfare and research integrity. We're passionate about building software that serves the people who care for research animals every day.