SCDM 2026 Annual Conference

Patients. Sites. Industry.

The Real Research Triangle, Connected by Data.

September 14-17, 2026. Raleigh. North Carolina.

September 14-17, 2026.
Raleigh. North Carolina.

Get your ticket

Explore the program

+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.

What you’ll

LEARN

How patients, sites and sponsors actually connect through data and where things still break down.

What to

EXPECT

Mix of big ideas and real world practice. Hear from people shaping the field dive into sessions that tackle everyday challenges and have space to learn.

Who you’ll

MEET

People across the whole research ecosystem, from sponsors and CROs to site teams, tech partners and emerging voices.

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.

Secure your seat

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

[Senior Director, Clinical Data Strategy, Clinical Data Veeva Systems]

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?

Data: the connector.

The Research Triangle works because of what flows between its points. Clinical research is no different. Patients, sites, and industry can each operate in isolation, but they only succeed when they’re connected, and the medium of that connection is data: well-managed, standards-compliant, and patient-centred. Clinical data professionals are the architects of that connection.

See where the connections happen

Unmissable at SCDM's
Festival of Opportunity

Endless Connections

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.

Discover the Leadership Forum

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.

End-to-End Data Flow

The digital, standards-driven pipeline that links all three points, from protocol to submission.

Patient’s Choice 2.0

The patient-centric model that empowers patients and eases the burden on sites.

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.

Join us at #SCDM26

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 Practice

For 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, ThoughtSphere

SCDM 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 Systems

As 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.