Dive Deep into Innovation
As a registered attendee for the Innovation Network Gathering, you’ll work shoulder to shoulder with industry leaders to solve the most pressing challenges of clinical trials, technology, and services. Your voice, expertise, and passion is needed.
We’ll shape the future of Clinical Trials together.
What are Dive Teams?
Dive Team sessions are breakout working groups that gather decision makers and innovators in the clinical trial industry to discuss and find solutions to challenges within the sector for lasting impact beyond the conference.
They are designed to facilitate working shoulder to shoulder with industry leaders, diving into in-depth conversations on challenging topics that produce tangible outcomes.
The term “Dive Teams” are inspired by remarkable individuals that by working together explore the deepest part of the world, the Mariana Trench.
What can we discover and accomplish when we bring the best people together in the pursuit of advancing the Clinical Trial industry for all?
How Dive Teams Work
Small groups (Dive Teams) break out to explore deep questions (Challenger Questions), flag items for the future, and identify doable projects to advance the whole sector.
Challenger Questions: Dive Teams address critical issues within the sector. Participants engage in meaningful dialogue to produce actionable solutions.
Submit Your Own Challenger Question/Topic
We want to hear from the sector about the biggest challenges that need to be tackled. Consider:
What frustrates you about the sector?
What can the sector learn?
What is not being talked about that needs to be?
2026 Dive Team Topics for emerGING
Current list of topics attendees will dive in together at our next Gathering.
Note: topics will be continued to be refined as the Gathering approaches.
Confirmed Topics
Patient Trust as Strategy: Moving Patient-Centricity from Intention to Impact
How can life sciences organizations prioritize, operationalize, and measure patient trust as the central driver of truly patient-centric clinical research?
The Patient Journey, Reimagined: Where Can Technology and AI Transform Clinical Trial Engagement
How can technology and AI enhance participant engagement without losing sight of what participants truly need?
The Reality Map of Agentic AI in Clinical Operations: From Pilot to Scale
Where is agentic AI moving from concept to real-world clinical operations impact, where is adoption still immature, and what capabilities, guardrails, and organizational readiness are needed to scale responsibly?
Two New Industry Standards to Measure Clinical Research Quality
If you could see a site network's reliability before you allocated a trial, what would you do differently?
Evidence Over Anecdote: Experiments in Trial Recruitment
What do we take on faith about patient enrollment, and how can we build a foundation of useful evidence for better enrollment practices?
Good HCP Practice: Standardizing Care Coordination in Clinical Trials
What standard “Good HCP Practices” should healthcare practitioners be aware of and apply when caring for patients enrolled in clinical trials, so they can support coordinated care, recruitment, safety, protocol adherence, and decentralized trial activities (without becoming sub-investigators)?
Investigator Meetings: Did We All Fly Here to Watch Slides?
Most investigator meetings (IM) are built for spectatorship (one deck, one script, every site gets the same content). How might we reimagine IMs?
Leading Through the AI Revolution: Human Leadership for the Future of Clinical Research
As AI reshapes clinical research, the biggest challenge isn't technical; it's human. How do we as leaders prepare the workforce for the age of AI?
Operation TrialBlazer: Making the Vision Real
What does an Operation TrialBlazer operating model actually look like?
In Progress 2026 Topics
Last Mile Trial Recruitment: Reimagining Upstream Patient Qualification
How can we mitigate the misalignment of incentives across the whole recruitment chain — sponsors, CROs, sites, and patients — that keeps breaking the "last mile" of getting the right patient to the right trial?
What attendees are saying…
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"I left the Innovation Network Gathering inspired and filled with new perspectives!"
- Aaron Horowitz
Founder & CEO | Empath Labs -
"Every aspect of the Gathering is highly orchestrated...from start to finish, participants are engaged in a seamlessly executed program."
- Laura Hilty
Principal | HealthX Ventures -
"Well done. Great opportunity to bring great minds together."
- Kim Buchanan
Associate Director Development Quality | Merck