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?

Suggest a Topic

Dive Team Topics for emerGING 2026

Current list of topics attendees will dive in together at our next Gathering.

Note: some of the topics will be continued to be refined as the Gathering approaches.

Confirmed 2026 Topics:

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)?

Operation TrialBlazer: Making the Vision Real
What does an Operation TrialBlazer operating model actually look like?

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 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?  

In Progress 2026 Topics:

Evidence over Anecdote: Experiments in Trial Recruitment
How can we generate higher quality evidence for better enrollment practices?

How to Level Up Study Launch
How might we improve investigator meetings?

Last Mile Trial Recruitment
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?

Leading Through the AI Revolution: Human Leadership for the Future of Clinical Research
How might we unlock the full potential of clinical trials by digitizing sites and enabling connectivity and data aggregation across the ecosystem?

Quality Measurement Improvement
How can the clinical research industry define and measure quality at both the institutional and site levels using a small, standardized set of agreed-upon metrics that improve transparency, credibility, and performance across organizations?

We Never Defined Engagement. Will AI?
Do we actually know what participant engagement is, before AI standardizes it?

Submit a Nomination For the Next Gathering

Nominate someone you know (or yourself) that should be at next year’s event.

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What attendees are saying…

  • "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