AI Consulting in Durham

Yes, within the boundaries eRA Commons exposes via its APIs and reporting exports. Most research administration offices we work with aren't looking to automate submission itself — that stays in the hands of a grants administrator — but there's a real volume of downstream work that can be systematized: pulling award data into internal tracking dashboards, triggering milestone reminders when reporting deadlines approach, routing no-cost extension paperwork to the right PI and department administrator without a chain of forwarded emails. We map the specific data flows during an audit before proposing any build, so the scope is based on what your systems actually support, not what the grant platform theoretically allows. Anything touching submission or official record-keeping stays with a human in the loop.

We build with audit trail and version control as first-class requirements, not afterthoughts. For biotech clients whose documentation feeds into IND filings, NDA submissions, or GMP compliance packages, every automated workflow we build produces a tamper-evident log of what ran, when, and on what input — structured for the kind of traceability an FDA audit would expect. We don't position ourselves as regulatory consultants, and we don't advise on submission strategy. What we do is make sure the automation layer doesn't create compliance gaps: outputs are dated and versioned, access is scoped to the people who should have it, and the system produces records a QA team can actually use. Before any build ships for a regulated workflow, we walk the client's regulatory affairs contact through the data flow documentation so they can sign off on it independently.

The foundation is a signed Business Associate Agreement with the model provider before any PHI touches the system — typically through enterprise endpoints at Anthropic, OpenAI, or Azure OpenAI that carry zero-retention, no-training contractual terms. Beyond that, the build itself is scoped so PHI stays within the covered entity's network perimeter wherever possible: we prefer on-premise or VPC-deployed processing over routing patient data through a third-party API unless the BAA is signed and the data governance team has reviewed and approved the flow. Access controls mirror whatever role-based structure the health system already uses — we don't introduce a separate permission model that has to be maintained in parallel. For internal knowledge retrieval and administrative automation, the practical result is a tool that clinical and administrative staff can use without a separate security review for every query, because the architecture already restricts it to what they're authorized to see.

The highest-leverage place is usually the reporting and status layer. Supplier relationships with large primes involve a recurring overhead of status updates, milestone documentation, and deliverable tracking that pulls project managers off actual project work. A KPI snapshot that aggregates data from your project management system, contract milestones, and finance tool — delivered to the right people on a schedule without a weekly meeting to produce it — is a straightforward build that tends to pay back quickly. The second common pattern is internal knowledge retrieval: when your team grows fast enough that new hires spend their first weeks asking questions that are already answered in internal docs or past project files, a well-scoped knowledge assistant cuts that ramp significantly. We start with an audit that maps where the manual work is actually happening before we propose anything specific, because the bottleneck is different in every organization.

First step is the AI readiness audit at $99 — it runs remotely, takes about a week, and produces a written report that maps your actual workflow gaps and ranks automation candidates by impact and complexity. That report is useful regardless of whether you engage us for a build. If you do, fixed-price builds typically run two to four weeks depending on integration complexity, with pricing disclosed at scope. For Durham's biotech and academic-medical clients, builds that touch regulated workflows or require a BAA tend to run on the higher end of that range because the documentation and compliance review layer adds time. The $497 Founder Review Call is available if you want a ninety-minute session with the founder before committing to anything — you leave with a written prioritization memo, not a sales pitch.