I think I've skipped a travel disaster or two in my scant blogging efforts, but our recent trip down to Atlantic City for IMDG Vendor day requires a quick sentence or two. First off, this is an event that is held once every 3 years or so, a special time when vendors can come address an industry group which generally excludes vendors. So we felt pretty special being able to go. And because it is in Atlantic City, we figured it would be best to... drive? (Don't ask) So driving actually turns out well because we have a GIANT RFP to work on and Laura bravely volunteered to read and type while I ramble and drive. Making great time and we stop at McDonalds in Greenwich CT, I'm looking for my wallet.. in my pocket, surely its there, my pocket simply cannot be that big... uh oh...

Which was good because then I had the rest of the trip to contemplate whether or not I had been pickpocketed, or if I was really dumb enough to leave on an 8 hour journey to a *casino* with no wallet. And finally how the heck I'm getting a room in this day and age. Long story short, Laura sold some jewelry* on the street corner and gave me $500 which I still have not paid back. What the heck! We had fun and talked quite a bit with a few prospects that the conference, anyway. Won big at craps the first night, and, as you can imagine, lost it all back the second.

ANYWAY,

With all that fun behind us we barely finished the Biggest RFP Known To Man in the Shortest Possible Time Frame, but by working during all waking hours, we pulled it off. Boy I sure hope we win this one :)

In the meantime, we have just completed tcVisualize actuals integration with ICON! We are showing the results to a major pharma customer of ours in the morning, and I have to say it looks fantastic! Thanks to our friends at ICON for their hard work on their part of the extract, and to Nick and Jeremy for pulling it all together on our end. I didn't mention before, but we also completed Clinphone actuals integration this year - we now have Clinphone, ICON, Perceptive, and an IVRS that we built for a major pharma (99%) complete! Things are going well.

Many demos and client visits continue on the horizon including 2 important Trident demos the first week in September. Anyone who is in CT can check in on Robin and Panlong and see the incredible things they are doing with the Trident Admin and EUS systems, really cool stuff and in my opinion this will be the next generation software for a loooong time to come.

Take care everybody,

Ed

*not true - used ATM

Again, its been far too long since the last blog entry. Next time I go more than 3 weeks with no blog I insist that someone send me a flame mail indicating moderate disappointment in my blogging qualities. First flame gets a candy bar. (Second gets to write a blog entry!)

Anyway, things are very very busy for us in August and I couldn't possible share all that is going on but a few highlights are that the tcViz pipeline continues to be quite strong, and we are working with a number of serious prospects to model sample studies and consider how to move forward. Also, Trident is progressing and we may have a first glimpse of the new *flash-based* admin system from the New London office as early as next week! Interest in Trident is also strong, especially for how little we've tried to market it lately. Ajaya's India team has apparently come roaring out of the gate and is already winning accolades in the first week or so of taking on IVRS tickets. (just like we knew they would!) We continue to expand our IVRS services group as well - under the organizational guidance and leadership of Kristina, this group is becoming a force to be reckoned with.

One thing that I mention to people sometimes, but I'd really like to stress here on the blog: if possible, learn tcVisualize. Not necessarily the code base or the heavily technical aspects, but rather the ability to model and tune just about any study that a customer can throw at us. This gives you the advantage of having a really neat birds-eye view of the clinical supply chain, also to have a skill which is more and more in demand (best practice clinical supply forecasting) and it also allows us to grow organically as more and more calls for our forecasting *expertise* come in.

Also, Kenny is fighting "el Matador" Roger Heurta on Saturday on PPV. Go Kenny!

This morning we finally got our press release out discussing the concept we unveiled in Rome: that a parameter driven IWR and parameter driven simulator mesh perfectly and create vast efficiencies compared to where the market is today. The most obvious improvement was demonstrated when we ignored the traditional 12-week study setup lead time by setting up, simulating, then launching a study live in Trident IWR in less than 30 minutes in front of a big audience (and with their input!).

Will Trident IWR (and its undelying concepts) come to dominate the $300M/yr IVRS market? Only time will tell!

Having completed some blog-housekeeping activities, I realize that I'd better write about the Israel trip now before I forget everything. As things stand right now, I've been in a bit of a haze since returning due primarily to this monstrous, demonic stomach bug which has kept me from smiling much but finally seems to be subsiding a wee bit (knocking furiously on wood).

So, my traveling companion Harald and I have an 11PM flight out of Rome and so we figure, what with the increased security and whatnot, we'll leave the hotel at 5PM just to be sure. Trouble is, you can't even do anything or talk to anyone about anything more than 3h before your flight. This axiom seems to be true regardless of how long security is going to take - it may take the whole 3 hours, but you still cannot begin anything prior to 3 hours before your flight. Therefore, my advice: arrive exactly 3 hours prior to your flight. So we ask a nice info desk guy where a good place to eat is and he's looking at us like we're nuts (we figure its language barrier - Harald is German speaking English and I'm American and we're in Italy). Finally the guy manages to say something like: "Every place in Italy has great food, except airport". So we get some nasty airport food and try to work, but now my laptop has begun to reboot every minute or so and things aren't looking so good for the big demo in Israel.

By 4AM, we are claiming our luggage in the airport in Tel Aviv. The airport is big and modern and spacious and incoming security is not what you'd think - not overwhelming at all and the type of thing that happens is you're walking along in some random place and a planinlydressed young woman walks up next to you, and, still walking, starts asking questions about what you are doing and where you came from, where you are going etc. Seems like a highly qualitative model and so far I'm impressed.

Lets assume we got to bed around 5am with a plan to meet again at 10am (!?!?) and ultimately meet up with our host Ariel. Its Thursday (I think, or maybe not) and this is going to be a down day where we can sleep and rest and visit and plot world domination, etc. And prepare for the demo the next day. So the VooDoo miraculously starts working again and I'm doing some kind of dance that I think it will like to stay that way for the demo. Next thing I know I'm up and headed out to meet some people in Jerusalem. Met some potential customer folks and some more Rockwell folks, splendid people all. After a while, it was time to finish work and go out sightseeing (completely arranged by Ariel) so we piled into a Chevy Trailblazer (you don't even want to know how expensive and rare these are in Israel) and traveled directly to some of the oldest and most holy places in the world, according to 3 different religions. The walk into the center of the city takes us through a long series of twisty stone alleys all lined with shops and shops and shops and people hawking all sorts of wares (many seeming repeated over time). Finally we come upon the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and enter it. Inside there are amazing relics, tombs and sites that I will not try to describe. Suffice it to say that groups of the devout were moving from place to place, sometimes spontaneously breaking out in hymns. Despite my ignorance and lack of preparation for such a visit, I was awestruck.

After a time we moved onwards and visited the Western Wall, wish according to one source is "the most sacred spot in Jewish religious and national consciousness and tradition...". In order to approach this wall we (the men) need to cover our heads and so luckily there are a batch of cardboard head coverings forthe taking and I put one on and approach the wall, where various devout Jews are praying and moving and communicating with or through the wall in just about the most earnest manner that I could imagine. I am distracted by a few panhandlers (surprised as well) as well as a few kids with M16's milling about, as well as the unfortunate fact that my head covering keeps falling off and I keep scrambling to replace it. Nonetheless the impression is made on my mind and my senses and I see now for sure why people *actually travel*, rather than just read about things in books or on the internet.

Just beyond the wall can be seen a brilliant gold dome which I was unclear about, asked some ignorant questions, and somehow now am still unclear about. I believe that the adjacent space to the Western Wall (or very close anyway) is a Muslim holy site and is actually off limits to Israelis and therefore, our guide being Israeli, we did not visit it. Finally, we walked around a small section of the wall of Jerusalem, which Ariel promised me we could actually walk all the way around and come back to where we started ("only about 4 miles!") but we were getting tired and hungry and the parking garage might have been ready to close its gates so we piled back in teh Chevy and headed over to - you'll seriously never guess - a rooftop barbequeue at Ariel's place.

This post is getting long so I will leave it by saying that Ariel's barbequeue and hospitality could be rated on a scale of 1-10 at approximately 11, and I hope some day to be able to repay such a wonderful experience. The following day the meeting with our potential customer went swimmingly, as well I think as it possibly could have, and so all is well with a successful trip.

On the way back I got a real taste of Israeli airport security (too many wires and electronics I guess) including the multi phased dump-out-all-your-stuff, bombscan and catscan everything, put a whole bunch of it in a box to be checked into luggage, and come into this back room for the patdown and metal scan. I guess they didn't like it that I didn't have a special letter from the potential customer we visited. Oh well, live and learn. At least it was interesting. I recall during the back room search the guy was really nice and apologetic and I was really not very put out, he said something like " you don't understand, there are people who want to do terrible things to us". Hey, this is no problem at all, I'm thinking.

12 hours in a middle seat between two guys, and I've got the only in-flight entertainment system on the whole plane which does not work. Nor does my light or fan or call button, but the guy next to me mercifully left his light on while he slept so I could sort of lean that way and read. Aided by a series of J&B on the Rocks's, I did not move once from my seat the entire flight. In NJ I missed the connection of course, but luckily caught the next one after having to claim my luggage and re-check it (??) including the new box with all my electronic stuff in it, including my poor poor VooDoo. Home at last and I'm realizing that we really do have it good in the US, and despite how awesome both countries were, I really do not like to travel much.

Day 2 rolls around, which is actually day 1 of the conference, and we've theoretically got lots of time to practice and hone our demo (since we are slated for dead last on day 2). Our booth is outside the main hall and kind of lonely, although Bilcare eventually joined us there. First thing we notice upon getting ready to demo: the wireless hub antennas are missing. It can't work without them. Coathangers are not a good substitute.

So Alex heads off to try and find the Apple Store Rome (simple, right?) and, long long story short, ends up getting dumped out in the middle of nowhere by a fickle cabby who decided not to continue on the journey. Cost: 50E. Meanwhile, the organizers come over and say hey someone got sick, can you go today instead of tomorrow? Now, this seems like a great idea to me since we can get everything over with, relax and have a good night out, and also drive people to our lonely booth. Only trouble is the wireless hub is n/a and Alex is n/a as well. So we commit to going second-to-last on day one, regardless. As time goes on it becomes apparent that using the wireless hub to have the audience login to Trident as clinical sites might just be *a bit much* so we're starting to fall back to plan B: I'll be the clinical site. Over time, this becomes the plan.

Which is good, because my presention was positively WAY too long, and I had to rush like crazy just to get through the slides and then do the demo. Talking really fast in English to a European audience might not always be the best idea, but its clear that by the end at least some people got the picture - and were enthusiastic. The moderator called our presentation a "tornado" (and a few other things, I think) but the upshot was that we got the point out, and lots of interest flowed in thereafter. For the next conference I think we'll do just the slides and then afterwards we can do a workshop and take our time walking through study setup and "clinical site" logins.

Feeling reasonably good about our presentation, and exceedingly happy that it was over with, we went out to dinner and around Rome with our friends from Rockwell Automation and a customer from Millennium Pharma. This was a most excellent experience involving excellent entrees (spaghetti for me!), desert and drinks elsewhere, and culminating in cocktails and cigars at a cool little bistro overlooking the Colleseum!

Next day we mostly fielded follow up questions from our "tornado" and did various demos of tcViz and Trident for folks stopping by our somewhat less lonely booth.

next up: Isreal!

Notoriously bad traveler that I am, I nearly messed up the whole operation by arriving at Leg 1 (Boston Logan) sans passport. Crisis averted by speeding family-courier-wagon, Robin Alex and I took the redeye out of Philly departing at 6PM and arriving at... 8AM.

Customs etc. were a breeze, and the booth actually made it onto both planes and landed in baggage claim prior to my own bags. Little problem with booth weight (don't exceed 100 lbs under any circimstances, thanks) but throwing some ballast overboard solved this.

Now the fun begins, and we get approached by a friendly cabbie limo type who claims to have "big car". He does, and its a Mercedes V220 - V class I suppose is for seriously big van, and 220 represents I'm guessing a 2.2 litre 4 cylinder engine that barely powered the thing around. Europeans love small engines, it seems.

Arrived at the hotel in not too long at all, a bit bleary. Want a receipt? Yes. Receipt says on it: 75. I hand him 80 Euro's for a 5 E tip. A big old Grazie and he drives away probably planning his next vacation, while Alex and Robin are raising their eyebrows that I would pay so much for such a short trip. Note to self: next time, ask/negotiate the price prior to getting into the V class.

Next its drop the stuff in our rooms and get breakfast. REAL nice buffet but the guy looks concerned because we dont get free breakfast until tomorrow. What could go wrong I think, and proceed to munch down a huge, excellent Italian breakfast of all sorts of nice treats. Bill comes: 25E. Ahh, now I see why you don't want to pay for the buffet. Then Alex and Robin do the same thing. (We're tired and not coordinating well). Net damage on breakfast: 75 more Euros.

We've been in Rome for an hour and we're down 150 Euros, but the pace just continues. I'm hoping for a morning nap but the guys force me to take them out to see the Colleseum (3 Euros: subway) Where I buy a powerade and a cappacino (receive: Coke and a coffee) for some more E's. Walk around Rome a very great deal looking at ancient architecture and generally cool Europeanness.

Now back to the hotel with very tired feet for a shower and a prep session on tcViz + Trident, our big conference surprise. I accidentally take a 1.5 hour nap and leave the guys hanging but they seem to be having fun and are - ahem - not tired at all - so its all good. More talk about our demo etc, conversation with Nick, logisitcs planning, and we landed on quantum physics for a good 45 minutes I think. In the mean time we're ordering things like "Martini" and getting things like "odd tasting mystery drink, definitely not available in the US", and "Amaretto" and getting Port. Asking for the check we get a dessert menu, so we get to chat about more obscure stuff for ALOT longer, finally get the check, up to bed, write this blog, getting up early in the morning so signing off. Chaio!

As we speak, (?!?!), Paul and Leon are down in Philly officially launching TS pharma product #2, Fusion Document Management and Collaboration Platform. The product web site, which includes a few live demos, is at:

http://fusiondoc.com

and the press release for the product launch can be seen here:

http://www.pharmalive.com/News/index.cfm?articleid=512038&categoryid=23

Great job the the whole Fusion team getting this product into production at our first customer, and also setting up and configuring all of the components on a mere demo laptop! Good luck, Paul and Leon.

TS attendance and speaking engagements at various clinical supply and clinical technology conferences continues at a healthy pace. In February, we'll be speaking and presenting in Rome at VIB Clinical Supply Europe at the end of the month. Here's the link:

http://www.clinicaltrialsevents.com/europe2008/

And, for our faithful blog readers only, here is a sneak preview of our session abstract:

The past several years have seen a shift in the field of clinical supply planning towards a more scientific approach to study demand modeling, primarily through the use of clinical supply simulation tools. As clinical supply simulation has become more sophisticated, simulation tools have developed capabilities to fully model even very complex studies. Since clinical supply simulators are intended for use by business experts rather than programmers, the setup and simulation of very complex studies has been moved from the realm of programming and statistics into the realm of power-user accessibility.

At the same time, traditional IVRS have started to move towards IWR (Web) and, signficantly, away from programming for each study and towards parameterization*.

As a result of all this, two interesting things become apparent: First, that a proper clinical supply simulator contains nearly all of the logic and functionality of an IWR or IVRS. Second, and perhaps more importantly, that the power-users of clinical supply simulators have been empowered, via parameterized UI.s, to construct and model the majority of all study functions themselves - with no programming required.

How fully do clinical supply simulators and IWR/IVRS overlap? Almost entirely. It is easier to see the differences between the two by looking at what they do not share: site shipping information, end user information, actual patient and kit rands, custom data collection, and a few other translation and presentation issues. Nearly everything else is overlap: kit and TG information, visit and dosing schedules, country and site information, internal algorithms, supply chain setup including resupply parameters and lead times, etc.

Taking these developments to the next logical level, it would seem possible to closely integrate Simulation and IWR such that the study setup is done once, modeled and optimized in the Simulator, then exported to the IWR with little or no additional work needed to launch a study. The advent of parameterized IWR as well as full-featured clinical supply simulators has enabled the elimination of substantially all programming and validation efforts traditionally associated with launching a study in IVRS.

What does all this mean? At a minimum, any organization which has adopted clinical supply simulation as a pre-study best practice has . at least in theory . the ability to totally circumvent the industy standard 8-week IVRS programming period (and costs) and launch a live study at any time after simulation is complete.

Our demonstration of a live study setup and launch will seek to demonstrate this point.

*The most advanced such IVRS/IWRs also include provisions for custom .pluggable. code and data, to handle odd cases or custom behavior that is not reasonably parameterized.

We are pleased to announce Mr. Paul Colburn has joined Tourtellotte Solutions as Director of Bio-Pharmaceutical Sales. Paul is responsible for software and services sales in the bio-pharmaceutical sector. Paul brings twenty-five years of enterprise software and systems sales and implementation experience to Tourtellotte Solutions and will be instrumental in assisting the company achieve a leadership position with our industry leading tcVisualize, Fusion, and Trident product offerings. Prior to joining Tourtellotte Solutions Paul held positions with Travelers Insurance, Wang Laboratories, Eastman Kodak, and Eastman Software. He was most recently with Global 360, a leader in Business Process Management and Optimization solutions.

Paul is married with one child and resides in the Hartford, CT area. He serves on the Board of Directors of Special Wishes Inc., an organization devoted to assisting families facing life threatening childhood diseases. He has been very active in local politics and youth athletics. His interests include the outdoors, hiking, fishing, and travel. Paul holds a BA in Sociology from Wesleyan University and served honorably in the U.S. Army.

Anyone who has been studying our new Fusion(tm) Document Management, Workflow and Collaboration Platform web site (http://fusiondoc.com) may have noticed that the first of the three online demo links has been "under construction" pretty much since the launch of the site.

Well, now its up. We've done the previously unthinkable on the web and actually replaced an "under construction" link with some content. But then, you knew we would, right?

This one includes some footage of our integration with the excellent PleaseReview product from our friends at PleaseTech (http://pleasetech.com). If all goes as we hope, we'll be working more closely with these folks in the future.

Thanks to Laura for another awesome demo.

Also, we are planning to put up an internal version of Fusion in the near future to manage our our documents and workflow - we need a doc management system so why not use the best? We will probably use Fusion's internal data store rather than hook it to documentum or one of the other underlying products, but in any case our internal folks will all get to try out the best new doc mgmt platform in the world. Because why not!?