Durham, NC · Research Triangle · Durham County
A part-time CIO for Durham, NC firms.
Research, biotech, and software teams, where putting the wrong document into an unapproved AI tool can breach a contract.
Typical setup for this market. Not a client count.
The market
What Durham looks like from here.
Durham runs on research, biotech, and software, with a large nonprofit and creative sector alongside. Study data and clinical documents here come with contract terms attached. The researcher who puts a protocol into an unapproved AI tool to tidy the wording is not being careless. No one has told them which tools are approved, because no one has decided.
The systems in a Durham firm are usually Microsoft 365, a study or client tracking system, and project and time tracking. Finance software sits underneath, and it has never quite produced the report the grant or the board wanted. We start by settling what may touch study and patient data and in which tools. Then we connect the tracking and finance systems so program and grant numbers come out the same way every month, from a dashboard you own.
What we would expect to find here. The protected data is obvious here and the tools are not. We settle which tools may touch study or patient material, then make program and grant reporting repeat itself every month.
Durham is a service area, not an office. One team, based in North Carolina, works in your own systems.
Where this has run
A profile close to this setup.
Grant reports took a week, though the data was already available.
Regional nonprofit · ~25 staff
Industries in Durham
Who we work with here.
Start here
- AI Use Policy — Advisory review
- vCIO Solutions — Advisory · monthly agreement
Where we work
Around Durham and across NC.
Questions
Questions about working with us from Durham
Where are you based and do you work remotely?
Third Shift Group LLC is based in North Carolina and works with firms across North and South Carolina. Most of the work runs remotely, against your Microsoft cloud account and your systems. Policy meetings and leadership sessions can be on site where that helps. See where we work for the regions and towns we cover.
How do you handle research data and clinical documentation?
Research data and clinical documentation are treated as protected information. The AI Use Policy names what may be processed where. Transcription and note-taking tools are reviewed rather than banned. Anything clinical stays inside the Microsoft cloud account you control, and the assessment shows where it currently reaches.
Start here
The first step is the same in every location.
Advisory first, in Durham as everywhere else: a written assessment you own.