By Mary Welch

Triangle Pharmaceuticals Inc. spun-out a new health information technology company, Intelligent Therapeutic Solutions Inc., (ITS) and the young company received $15 million in funding from two investors.

ITS was formed to provide solutions in the management of patients with chronic and complex diseases, focusing primarily at the point-of-care on the provider-patient relationship.

Virco Group NV, of Mechelen, Belgium, and Pythagoras Participations cvba, of Antwerp, the Netherlands, agreed to provide $15 million to continue the development of the HIV Therapy Expert (HIV-TE) system. Of the $15 million, $10 million has been invested and the remaining money will be invested on or before June 30. Virco and ITS will collaborate on potential future services and products.

After the $15 million is received, Triangle, which is based in Durham, N.C., will own 29 percent of ITS, and Virco and Pythagoras will each own 16.5 percent. The remaining equity will be held by employees of ITS and Triangle.

"The $15 million is to get us up and running by ourselves," said Walter Capone, ITS' chief financial officer and vice president of commercial operations. "What we're trying to do is leverage artificial intelligence to deliver therapeutic decisions."

Actually, ITS was formed early this year by the consolidation of 5Gen, a Durham, N.C.-based software company, with the group within Triangle responsible for the development of the first product, the HIV-TE program. Originally designed to facilitate clinical trials of Triangle's drug candidates, HIV-TE's broader use was first recognized by physicians, Capone said.

"Our first product is for HIV and a lot of us spent long hours, tears and sweat on it," he said. "We presented the system to doctors and they all wanted to actually have one in their offices. They kept asking if we'd make it available to them. So that's why we spun the company off."

The HIV-TE delivers therapeutic decision support by integrating and processing patient clinical and laboratory test data, medical history and other patient-specific information. The company integrated an artificial intelligence inference engine that mimics human physiology with that of the knowledge base of a team of medical experts or "12 luminaries of HIV," as Capone put it.

"We take all this information, everything from lab tests to prior medical and treatment history, every shred of information," and then the system allows doctors to manage the treatment of patients.

HIV-TE has the capability to integrate electronic medical records, chart functions, drug-drug interaction checking, interpretation of genetic mutations and context-specific links to medical information content sites. It can red-flag a doctor to look more closely at a specific situation.

"If you have 15 possible HIV drugs that a doctor could consider for the cocktail, that presents about 900 different combinations," said Capone. "And those are just the combinations that make sense. It would be useful for the doctor to know that the patient would prefer headaches as a side effect as opposed to nausea. There's a lot of information to deal with. With insurance companies bombarding doctors about managed care and costs, the doctors have less time to spend with patients. The real crux of this program is that it will help in the interaction between physician and patient."

The HIV-TE test is currently in pre-Beta testing at seven academic medical centers in the U.S. The company next intends to do a program for oncology.

"We think this system could change the way medicine is practiced and will be part of every medical practice 10 years from now," Capone said. Triangle's stock (NASSDAQ:VIRS) closed Tuesday at $12.125, down $1.875