Frank Vinluan

It’s a business cliché, but in clinical trials, time is quite literally money. Developing new drugs and testing them in clinical trials is a lengthy and expensive process. Pharmaceutical companies hope that moving through trials quickly will get them to market faster – assuming their drugs secure regulatory approval. Technology has streamlined various pieces of the clinical trials process but clinical trials startup and patient recruitment practices are still stuck in the past, says Gordon Jones, CEO of Raleigh company Acorn Applications. Jones says his firm’s software can make clinical trials more efficient where they are least touched by...

Zach Schabot and Jim Garman readily admit that they’re not technology geeks. Before they founded their startup, they didn’t know the first thing about developing mobile software. Even now they will concede there’s a lot they don’t know. But their company, GoConnect, has software that has quickly established itself in a niche but loyal customer base of real estate agents. In less than a year, the startup has rolled out a mobile app for both Apple and Android devices and new versions with added functionality are slated for release in coming months. How did two guys in Cary who...

Allan Brown likens his blueberry research to trying to put together one big jigsaw puzzle. Brown, an applied molecular geneticist with N.C. State University’s Plants for Human Health Institute at the N.C. Research Campus in Kannapolis, has spent several years working on the genomic sequence of the blueberry. Blueberries have shown correlation with reduction in disease, diabetes and age-related cognitive decline. Brown is trying to identify which parts of the blueberry genome are key to these beneficial effects. Some of the pieces the blueberry genome are 1 million base pairs long. Other pieces are smaller. Brown says there are...

In a turnabout from how deals involving Triangle companies typically go, a Durham startup is acquiring a Silicon Valley firm. Startup Validic, whose technology helps health care organizations connect with the growing array of health care software applications, has acquired a Silicon Valley company that offers similar capabilities. Validic disclosed no financial terms for its purchase of Infometers Inc., a company that connects remote health care monitoring devices to the health care system. With the deal, Infometers now becomes Validic’s Silicon Valley office in addition to the company’s headquarters near Research Triangle Park. Validic takes data from the consumer, fitness,...

Technology and life sciences are cornerstones of the Triangle economy but as much as they have supported local job growth these sectors lost out on adding more than 2,500 jobs due to the denial of visas to foreign-born workers. That finding comes from a report by the Partnership for a New American Economy, a bipartisan group supporting immigration reform. The calculation of jobs lost includes not only foreign workers who were not hired but also native-born workers who companies could not hire because the visa caps kept their businesses from expanding. The report, “Closing Economic Windows: How H-1B Visa...

Anyone who has attended a Carolina Hurricanes game or a rock concert at PNC Arena knows the drill: Quickly exit the venue, find your car and hope that your wait to exit the parking lot doesn’t take as long as the game or the concert. Marshall Brain – author (“How Stuff Works”), entrepreneur, professor – believes it doesn’t have to be that way. Imagine a fleet of small, driverless vehicles shuttling people in organized fashion to downtown, North Hills and Research Triangle Park, he says. Software coordinates the flow of these vehicles, which clear the crowds quickly and efficiently....