+200
Skilled speakers
+50
Educational sessions
+1200
International attendees
+25
Years of leadership
Experience SCDM’s
Festival of Opportunity
For 25 years, the Festival of Opportunity has been where our profession comes together to learn, reconnect and move clinical data management forward. In 2026 it comes to Raleigh, home of the real Research Triangle, and to the question at the center of our work: how do we connect patients, sites, and industry through the data we manage? The festival is the four days. What you do with them is the opportunity.
The opportunity is connection
The work is changing fast — AI moving into the workflow, regulatory expectations shifting, and trials growing more complex every year. The pressure to make patient, site, and industry data work together has never been higher.
Clinical research depends on three communities. Patients who make the research possible and live with the results. Sites, who run the trials and care for the people in them. Industry, who design and deliver the studies, and turn them into treatments. Each has different needs. None succeeds alone.
What connects them is data – well-managed, standards-compliant, audit-ready, patient-centred – and the people who manage it. That’s what #SCDM26 is built around: not only the opportunity to advance your own expertise, but the opportunity to strengthen the connection the whole system runs on.
Meet the co-chairs behind the program
Cecilia Calcagno
[Associate Director - Principal Clinical Data Manager, MSD Switzerland]
Derek Perrin
[Executive Director, Clinical Data Management Sarepta Therapeutics]
Manny Vazquez
[Executive Director, Clinical Data Management, Merck]
Vidya Deo
[Director, Data Science, AbbVie]
Why Raleigh
Raleigh sits at the heart of one of the world’s great innovation ecosystems: Duke, UNC, NC State, and Research Triangle Park. Its strength was never any single institution. It’s what moves between them: talent, ideas, and investment flowing across the points of the triangle.Clinical research works the same way. Patients, sites, and industry are three points that only hold together when they’re connected. There’s no better place to talk about that connection than the city built on it.
Three communities, one triangle.
Clinical research runs on three communities: patients, sites, and industry. Three distinct worlds, with different needs, pressures, and perspectives, but one goal that unites them: better treatments, and a healthier world. The 2026 theme is built around them, and around the thing that holds them together.
Patients
The reason any of this exists.
Real people, often living with the conditions under study, who choose to take part and trust us with their experience. They’re partners, not subjects: they help shape the research, decide how they take part, and expect to see what it led to. The question for us: how do we manage data in a way that honours that – easier participation, real transparency, and meaning returned to the people at the centre of every trial?
Sites
The operational heartbeat.
Coordinators, investigators, and site data managers carry the ground-level complexity of every study: queries, timelines, quality, all under pressure. The question for us: how do we become a genuine partner to sites, not another source of demands?
Industry
Where research becomes treatment.
The sponsors, CROs, and technology partners who design the research, build the systems that run it, and carry it through to the treatments patients receive. They need data the whole system can stand behind. The question for us: how do industry and clinical data professionals deepen their shared accountability for quality and scientific integrity?
Unmissable at SCDM's
Festival of Opportunity
Demos with solution experts
Hands-on Workshops
Demos with solution experts
Memorable networking opportunities
Inspiring Keynotes
Regulatory Townhall
Leadership Forum
A safe space designed for senior Clinical Data & Regulatory leaders to dicuss Strategy, Data, Operations and Technology
September 14, 2026.
Raleigh. North Carolina.
What you’ll leave with
A safe space designed for senior Clinical Data & Regulatory leaders to dicuss Strategy, Data, Operations and Technology
Models for connecting data end-to-end across patients, sites, and industry, not just optimizing your own corner.
How leading organizations are breaking down the silos between stakeholders.
Sharper patient-centric data strategies, built on transparency and trust.
Practical ways to work with sites and close the operational gap that slows so many studies.
A clear view of how to use AI to connect patient, site, and industry data, not just experiment with it.
The perspective and tools to lead that connection, as a strategic voice in your organization, not only a clinical data professional.
It’s also the one place the whole clinical data community is in the room together: pharma, CROs, technology and service providers, site teams, and patient advocates, alongside the regulators and standards bodies who set the bar the data has to clear.
Vision 2030, made concrete.
This isn’t a theme that sits next to Vision 2030. It’s Vision 2030 in practice. Each of the four pillars maps onto a point of the triangle.
Clinical Research 2.0
The seamlessly connected, real-world-data-powered ecosystem industry needs to run modern studies.
Patient’s Choice 2.0
The patient-centric model that empowers patients and eases the burden on sites.
End-to-End Data Flow
The digital, standards-driven pipeline that links all three points, from protocol to submission.
Intelligent Technologies
The AI and automation layer that lightens sites, sharpens quality for industry, and speeds outcomes for patients.
Vision 2030 asks us to empower our community to lead the evolution of clinical data. #SCDM26 answers the question that follows: lead it for whom? For patients. For sites. For industry. For the triangle that only holds when clinical data professionals do their job with excellence.
Still the Festival of Opportunity
For more than 25 years, SCDM’s Annual Conference has been the flagship event for clinical data management, world-renowned for the insight it delivers and the careers it advances. That hasn’t changed. It’s still where the industry comes together, still where you’ll find fresh thinking, still where you reconnect with the people who make this work.
What people say
First time joining and thoroughly impressed by the well-balanced topics and speakers, and the many practical and detailed examples such as the ones provided by FDA, DMA, BfArM and MHRA at the regulatory townhall!
Hilde Vanaken
Head European Forum GCP eConsent, European Forum for Good Clinical PracticeFor Clinical Trials Operations leaders, particularly those who believe that data management and analytics are key to efficiency and cycle time gains, SCDM in general and SCDM 2024 in particular was the highlight of the year. This is a forum where all the elements came together: sponsors, vendors, regulators and all manner of practitioners, for engaging, solution oriented dialogues.
Avi Kulkarni
CEO, ThoughtSphereSCDM is like coming home. It's reconnecting with friends and former colleagues. It's a chance to giveback, learn and have fun.
Dan Crawford
Principal Consultant, Veeva SystemsAs a first-time attendant, I had a wonderful experience. I was able to network, make somenew friends and learn about new and upcoming products and technology.
Yosi Puma
Project Manager, Clinica Data, Sysmex America, incIf you are in Data Management/Clinical Data Sciences, this is the go to conference to engage and learn!
Susan Bornstein, MPH
AD CDM, SMB Boars Advisory and ConsultingChoose your pass
Dive into the latest in clinical data excellence, all while having fun with your colleagues in true SCDM style.
Ready to join us in Raleigh?
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1,840.00
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3 Days
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$
1,480.00
SCDM Member
3 Days
Regular Fee
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Looking for practical approaches you can bring back to your team?
From AI and personal branding to risk-based quality management, the #SCDM26 interactive workshops help you tackle real-world challenges, exchange ideas with peers, and return to work with actionable insights.
September 14, 2026.
Raleigh. North Carolina.
