Networking Meeting Summary

June 12 FOCM | GLSA Online Networking Event Recap

2024 Mid-year Highlights: A Successful Gathering

On June 12, the Global Life Sciences Alliance (GLSA) hosted an engaging online networking event focusing on the 2024 mid-year highlights. The event saw a robust turnout with 35 participants, blending familiar faces with new members, fostering a vibrant and dynamic discussion.

Opening Remarks and Industry Updates

Chris Matheus kicked off the event with a warm welcome, introducing new members and setting the stage with industry updates, news, and conference reviews. Participants shared their travel plans, locations, and upcoming trips, adding a personal touch to the professional gathering.

Networking and Collaborative Initiatives

The meeting adopted an open house format, encouraging participants to share their LinkedIn profiles for seamless networking. Chris also promoted the Women of Life Sciences virtual event and called for volunteers to judge the best giveaways at the upcoming DIA, led by Sheila Mahoney-Jewels (smj@lifescihub.com).

GLSA’s Mission and Conference Insights

The GLSA reiterated its mission to provide solutions for clinical trial issues. Michael Young, Brian Langin, Cameron Robinson, and Denise McNerney shared insights from the BIO conference, which boasted over 19,000 attendees. Michael also reviewed the heavily attended ASCO conference, noting a significant presence of first-time exhibitors and attendees.

Business Update and Market Analysis

Chris Matheus presented a detailed analysis of the business performance in the first half of the year. He discussed the initial surge in activity, followed by a slowdown in decision-making and funding optimism. Chris also covered the recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting, touching on global uncertainties and their potential impact on market trends, including the upcoming US presidential election and geopolitical tensions.

Advances in Drug Approvals and Precision Medicine

Recent advancements in drug approvals for NASH/fatty liver and Alzheimer’s were highlighted, with Michael Young discussing precision medicine’s role in oncology drug development. Notable Labs’ blood test and Keliomics’ ex vivo tumor models, presented at ASCO, were showcased as revolutionary innovations that could transform early-stage development.

AI and ML Applications in Clinical Trials

Chris Matheus explored the applications of AI and machine learning in clinical trials. He highlighted the potential for large-scale simulations and AI tools to predict patient enrollment and rank doctors. Despite enthusiasm, participants expressed skepticism regarding the current state of these technologies, particularly in patient enrollment and regulatory validation.

Challenges in Patient Enrollment and Hiring Trends

The discussion also addressed the challenges in patient enrollment post-COVID and hiring trends. Michael Young and Chris Matheus were optimistic about the resurgence of in-person conferences, citing high attendance at recent events. Lisamarie O’Brien highlighted the difficulties in hiring, emphasizing the need for smarter recruitment strategies and the role of AI in applicant tracking systems.

AI in Language Translation and Clinical Studies

Duncan Shaw highlighted the challenges of using AI for language translation and clinical studies, stressing the need for exactness and precision. The group echoed these sentiments, agreeing on the importance of patience and caution in evaluating AI’s potential in these areas.

AI and Budget Building Challenges

Mike O’Gorman shared concerns about AI’s capabilities in budget building, while Ira Snyder emphasized the limitations in obtaining precise budgetary details due to data quality issues.

Site Negotiations and Challenges

The slow progress in securing site contracts was discussed by Michael Young and Jane Myles, with Viljena Trask highlighting the competitive nature of oncology site selection. Eliana R. Burke shared an encounter with a highly experienced clinical trial site, and Ira Snyder emphasized the need for balanced negotiations for successful collaboration.

If you would like a copy of the slide set, please email: chris@matheusbd.com or if I did this correctly you can get it here:

https://globallifesciencesalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2024-Mid-year.pdf

Looking Ahead

The next GLSA event is scheduled for July 17, with the subject yet to be determined. To stay updated on GLSA | FOCM events, sign up here. Stay tuned for more updates and we look forward to seeing you at our next event!

ATTENDEES:

(First time attendees in bold)

Judy Woods

Jane Myles

Viljena Trask

Bill Dirkes

Tom Lo

Lauren Sherwood

Ira Snyder

Cameron Robinson

Eliana Rivera Burke

Jared Byer

Joan Chambers

Lori Leathers

Jon Carlson

Christine Martin

Hiro Matsushima

Duncan Shaw

Lauren Merante

Lisa Marie O’Brien

Michael Young

Marlyn Brookins

Dr. Syed Rooh ul Arifeen Naqvi

Irene Rivera

Julia Oxley

Yuko Terasawa

GLSA

Denise McNerney

Jim Sarene

Kelvin Izevbekhai

Rocio Rayna Reyes

Timmina Williams

Chris Matheus

December Networking Event

The December FOCM | GLSA Networking event started out with welcoming everyone and a review of these meetings’ agendas summarized in the paragraph below.

For the newcomers, think of this as an open house event – drop in when you can and leave when you need to; when we have a topic and presenter we have them start when we have assembled a good number of people and that’s usually 10-15 minutes after the start.

There were several (ahem) great looking holiday sweaters and several pets were seen on camera as well. Candy Dupree won best outfit hands down. The link to get notifications about our future live and virtual events>> http://bit.ly/3UTb8hL

As our passion is to connect people and companies we know and like to other people and companies we know and like, we asked everyone to put into the chat the link to their LinkedIn profile. This allows for quick and simple connecting and facilitates future follow up.

We opened the event sharing industry updates, news, and/or gossip that anyone wanted to bring up. Chris shared that GLSA has contracted with two new clients: Validcare and Cool Chain to help the in their promotional and sales efforts. Validcare is disrupting clinical research with an all digital approach and fixed price study management. Cool Chain has shipping containers that can maintain a specified internal container temperature for 120 hours, be that sub zero frozen, frozen, refrigerated or room temperature. One of our clients Heal Mary, a SaaS AI enhanced patient recruiting platform has been awarded a project from a company we introduced them to and that will begin in February.

The group chose not to go into smaller breakout sessions, so we stayed in one room and talked about the holidays and what people’s plans were. We acknowledged the industry begins to get quite busy by the third week of January and we’re bracing for it.

Attendees:

Mike Burrows	Burrows Life Sciences Associates, PLC
Arti Bhosale	Sieve Health
Duncan Shaw	DTS Language Services
Nancy Zeleniak	Atrium Health
Debbie McCoy	Business Development Consultant
Michael Young	biomedwoRx; Life Sciences Consulting
Eric Nier	Block Clinical
Erica Hill	Marketing Consultant
Judy Carmody	Carmody Quality Solutions
Charles Speno	TrialX
Holly Jochims	Adaptive Clinical Systems
Kim Lupo	Portrett Pharmaceuticals
Nadia Bracken	Clinical Operations Director
Shruti Vashisht	Software Development
Chris Clancy	Medidata
Jon Matheus	A.T. Pancrazi Real Estate
Ori Geshury	Mirraponte
Liz Mirra	Mirraponte
Loretta Dubray	Global Clinical Connections
Mike O’Gorman	Life Science Marketplace
Candy Dupree	Adam’s Bridge Global

GLSA Attendees:

Denise McNerney
Chris Matheus
Joe Buser
Megan Hoffman
Charity Dube
Hannah LLoyd
Sally Haller
Timmina Williams
Holly Cliffe

A few screenshots from the event are below:

September Networking Event Summary

The GLSA | FOCM Networking Event on Wednesday, September 21, 2022 at 5:00 PM EST was a fascinating presentation by Patrick McCarthy and Steve Galen of Validcare about a disruptive approach to the conduct of clinical trials. Recent advances in technology and learning to do things remotely due to COVID-19 helps make this possible. Not only is it possible, it is being done and Validcare is at the forefront.

https://validcare.globallifesciencesalliance.com/

The current clinical trial paradigm is broken. Decentralized clinical trials are proving not to be the solution. They’re merely a bolt-on expense that helps with patient access and engagement. DCTs do not reduce costs nor delays caused by inefficient data management, staffing and software systems. Validcare’s Digital 1st CRO Experience succeeds where DCTs do not. Finally we have the ability to fix the CRO Model and put an end to low-ball proposals to win the project followed by significant change orders shortly after study start-up.

Validcare’s platform puts the entire study in one cloud environment. This has been built by experienced industry insiders who knew that to fix the CRO model it had to be re-engineered from the outside. The platform has been designed on these principles:

Transparency
High performance
Low maintenance
Turn-key

As such it provides for predictable financial performance allowing for a fixed price for study conduct.

To nobody’s surprise, we couldn’t stay away from discussing the Fall conference schedule and who was intended to go to which events. It looks like a full return to in-person events with DPharm, SCDM, OCT New England, CNS Summit, MAGI West, CTS East Coast, etc.

Andrew Mulchinski stated that Symbio hasn’t fully adapted to DCT yet, sparking the post-quarantine observations of many regarding the transition to decentralized and hybrid studies.

Let’s continue to reinforce our collective goal to improve patients’ lives across the globe. If you would like to present on an educational life sciences topic and spur our event discussions, please leave a comment below and I’ll reach out as soon as possible.

Attendees (first time attendees in bold):

Julia Love, CEO, Love Contracts
Candy Dupree, National Sales Director, AdamsBridge Global
Himanshu Desai, Global Head PV QA, Novartis
Mike O’Gorman, CEO Life Science Marketplace
Mindy Bertram, Owner, CMB Consultants
Andrew Mulchinski, Business Development, Symbio Research
Wayne Whittingham, Vice President, Regulatory, Cardio Pharma
Duncan Shaw, CEO, DTS Language Services
Katherine Cloninger, Senior Director, Brand Marketing, Parexel
Ravi Luthra, Clinical Research Coordinator

GLSA:
Chris Matheus
Joe Buser
Holly Cliffe
Denise McNerney
Sally Haller
Hannah Lloyd-Clark

A few screenshots are below:

August Networking Summary

Buying and Selling with Great Technology!

The GLSA | FOCM Networking Event on Wednesday, August 17th, 2022 at 5:00 PM EST was expectedly light in attendance with many of our friends and colleagues taking a well-earned break during these summer months.

Our guest speaker, Michael O’Gorman, CEO of Life Science Marketplace, treated us to a demonstration on how to use his innovative pricing tool for Sponsors and Vendors to connect and access more information, providing a more competitive bidding experience and allowing vendors to highlight their strengths and set themselves apart from the majority.

Our own Chris Matheus and Denise McNerney were attending a live event that GLSA and FOCM Networking were co-hosting with ProTrials Research in Raleigh, NC at the AC Hotel Level 7 Rooftop Bar and thus did not join our virtual meeting.

For those who missed the event and would like to learn how to buy and sell with Michael’s platform, please feel free to watch the video:

Insert video link here:

For more information or to schedule a more in-depth demonstration please contact “>Hannah Lloyd or fill out this form and we will be happy to assist you.

Let’s continue to reinforce our collective goal to improve patients’ lives across the globe. If you would like to present briefly on an educational life sciences topic and spur our event discussions, please leave a comment below and I’ll reach out as soon as possible. Our next event is scheduled for September 21 and CoolChain has been invited to discuss how how to ship and maintain temperature controlled shipments with eco-friendly reusable cold chain shipping containers.

Attendees included people from these organizations:

biomedWorx, Life Science Marketplace, Cmed Clinical Services, Curebase, EmVenio as well as several GLSA staff.

Photos of the event:

July Networking Summary

The GLSA | FOCM Networking Event on Wednesday, July 20th, 2022 at 5:00 PM EST was a lively affair boasting a diverse crowd of life science professionals. Many who attended were the previous colleagues and / or the current friends of Chris Matheus (FOCM, President; GLSA Chief Commercial and Networking Officer).

The topic of the day was “Summer Fun” due to the prevalence of the industry to go semi-dormant in July and August to accommodate the well-deserved vacations of its workers. The introduction, led by Chris, briefly spoke of former events which usually involved the related capabilities or education topic of a guest speaker to spur industry-related discussions and aid in collaboration among the group. He expressed the intention of this event to be focused more on the personal activities and vacations of attendees in order to keep our minds on the relaxation of these summer months.

To nobody’s surprise, we couldn’t stay away from discussing work including the most recently held conferences; BIO International Convention in San Diego, CA and DIA Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL with a specific mention about the limited presence of sponsors. An outbreak of Coronavirus at these events and the apparently foul-tasting Paxlovid medicine used to treat moderate cases of COVID sparked conversation about who among us has contracted the virus and the varying degrees by which each individual was affected.

Andrew Mulchinski stated that Symbio hasn’t fully adapted to DCT yet, sparking the post-quarantine observations of many regarding the transition to decentralized and hybrid studies. Chris noted a number of CRO’s that have changed leadership or have been acquired by other companies.

By far the most celebratory moment of the event was the announcement of the recent success of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in a small clinical trial using immunotherapy. They achieved 100% remission of rectal cancer without the use of surgery, chemotherapy or radiation that can leave patients with life-long effects including infertility and colostomy bags.

Let’s continue to reinforce our collective goal to improve patients’ lives across the globe. If you would like to present briefly on an educational life sciences topic and spur our event discussions, please contact me.

Attendees: (first time attendees in bold)

Kimberly Lupo, MS, MBA, RAC	Founder & CEO at Portrett Pharmaceuticals LLC
Sara Tylosky	CEO, Farmacon
Nadia M. Bracken	Operational Advisor, Medidata
Brian Horan	CEO & Co-founder, SupplyRx
Tina Tran	Director, Business Development, Unlearn.ai
Heather Hollick	Rizers LLC; Author of “Helpful, A guide to life, careers and the art of networking”
Amy Zastawney	Seeking a new executive business development role
Jon Matheus	Commercial Real Estate, A.T. Pancrazi Real Estate Services
Unnat Patel	Founder & President, AnalysisMate
Peter Payne	Life Sciences Executive – Available for Consulting
Griffin Robertson	Partner Account Manager, Mednet
Nancy Zeleniak	Enterprise Strategic Partnerships & Participant Engagement; Atrium Health
Dhruv Wadhwa	Director of Business Development, HUMA
Michael Young	Founder & Principal, BIOMedworx
Scott Robertson	Vice President of Sales, Global Partnerships; Mednet
Ravipal Luthra, MS, BDS	Clinical Research Coordinator, University of Miami, Miller Medical Center
Andrew Mulchinski, MPA, MT, ASCP, CCRC	Business Development; Symbio, LLC
Lani Hashimoto	Associate Director Patient Engagement Management; Novartis
Amanda Putnam	Team Lead Manager; Data Recognition Corporation
Michael O’ Gorman	CEO and Founder at Life Science Marketplace
Eliana Burke	Global Head of Client Engagement & Marketing; Greenlight Clinical
Michael Minor	EVP, Clinical Research; IMA Clinical Research
Vaibhav Sawant	Pharma Marketing Executive
GLSA ATTENDEES
Denise McNerney	Chief Operations Officer
Hannah Lloyd	Account Manager
Zulma Varela	Director of Public Communications
Sally Haller	Operations Manager
Todd Neilson	Account Manager
Joe Buser	Chief Revenue Officer
Chris Matheus	Chief Commercial and Networking Officer
Yutong Liang	Intern, Data Management and Technology

Screen shots of the event follow:

May Networking Event Summary

On May 18, the GLSA and FOCM held their monthly online networking event. We always start the meeting with some time for people to give an update on any news they’re heard or a significant event that has happened in the past month. Then we move to a featured presenter for 10 – 15 minutes presenting information about themselves, their company or a clinical research topic of relevance to them or to the industry.

This event featured Alison Macpherson, CEO and Founder of Bright Pharmaeutical Services, a full service CRO headquartered in Los Angeles. Bright is celebrating their 20th year in business.
http://www.brightps.com/

Alison talked about her experiences starting out in the clinical trials industry and how that led to her forming Bright with a boutique sponsor-centric approach and a focus on subject recruitment and retention. The company has worked in a variety of therapeutic areas and all phases of research. Its differentiators from other similar sized CRO’s is the very low turnover (less than 5%) over the 20 years in business, which means clients’ projects are supported by only very experienced and engaged staff. Additionally, while much of their experience is in phase I and II North America trials, they have worked in 30+ countries globally. Questions were handled as they came up leading to discussions about Bright’s experience with risk-based monitoring; the new normal of hybrid and decentralized trials; reducing the frequency of subject visits to the sites; and Bright’s experience with trials that require collecting data from wireless, connected devices, e-source data, etc.

After the presentation we had first time participants share their company names and experience. Josh Lang, Mike O’Gorman and Denise McNerney will be attending BIO in San Diego June 13 – 16. Carlos mentioned the networking event they are having on June 12 in San Diego for people interested in Farmacon Global’s August 25 conference focused on conducting clinical trials in Rare Diseases in Emerging Markets.In posing this question to the group – what are you working on and what do you need help with, Heather Hollick (who taught me this approach for successful networking) mentioned she is starting the Institute for Vibrant Leadership and could use connections to leaders, coaches with whom to collaborate as well as writers and virtual assistants. Subsequently, a few potential connection candidates have been sent to her. https://heatherhollick.com/

Attendees (bolded names indicate first time attendees):

Alison Macpherson, Bright Pharma Services
Heather Hollick, Rizers LLC; Author of “Helpful, A guide to life, careers and the art of networking”
Nicole O’Brien, Pain Care Labs
Josh Lang, Asymchem Group
Barbara Hilewsky, BRCR Global
Shane Krauss, Strados Labs
Carlos Martinez, Farmacon Global
David Holland, Cmed Research
Michael O’Gorman, Life Science Marketplace
Keisha Felix, IQVIA
Ludmilla Scodeler
Jim Choi, CRScube
Cesar Serapiao
Chris Matheus, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Sally Haller, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Denise McNerney, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Hannah Lloyd, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Todd Neilson, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Zulma Varela, Global Life Sciences Alliance

Several screen shots follow:

March Networking Event Digest

On March 16, the GLSA and FOCM held their monthly online networking event. We start the meeting with a featured presenter spending 10 – 15 minutes presenting information about themselves and a clinical research topic of relevance to them.

This event featured Wessam Sonbol, founder of Delve Health. Wessam has been in the clinical research industry for 23 years. Many of these years have been in leadership and founding roles in the technology and product development sectors to facilitate trials. He founded Delve Health in 2018. Delve Health provides innovative decentralized clinical trial solutions to improve clinical trial conduct for patients, caregivers, doctors and pharma/device. Offerings include ePRO/eCOA, eConsent, study tasks, wearables and biosensor integration, EMR data collection and Real-world evidence capabilities.

After the presentation, there were questions, answers and discussions. We then allowed newer participants the opportunity to tell us about their history in the industry and the group can be of help.

Attendees (bolded names indicate first time attendees):
Wessam Sonbol, Delve Health
Andrew Mulchinski, Symbio Research
Ravipal Luthra, University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine
Heather Hollick, Rizers LLC; Author of “Helpful, A guide to life, careers and the art of networking”
Michael Young, biomedwoRx: Life Sciences Consulting
Mike O’Gorman, Life Science Marketplace
Edwin Gershom, Noble Life Sciences
Taylor Biche, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Holly Cliffe, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Todd Neilson, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Hannah Lloyd, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Denise McNerney, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Joe Buser, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Zulma Varela, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Sally Haller, Global Life Sciences Alliance

https://globallifesciencesalliance.com/

Please join us on April 20 where the featured presenter will be Amy Baxter, MD; CEO and Founder of Pain Care Labs. PCL’s NIH-funded pain relief device is an ingenious intervention to reduce needle pain and fear – improving patient participation in clinical trials.

Selected screen shots appear below:

Screenshot with GLSA Mascot Teddy in lower left corner

February Networking Event

On February 16, 2022, the Global Life Sciences Alliance along with FOCM Networking held its monthly online drug and medical device development industry networking event. This was the second event of 2022 and like the January event, we again had 3 first-time attendees. Thank you to super-connector and FOCM member, Nadia Bracken for sharing our event with others.

We spent the first 15 minutes with introductions and general discussion about the weather in various attendees’ cities.

This event featured a presentation by Kalyan Ghosh, Founder and CEO of Inference, Inc (https://inferenceinc.com/). Inference, a GLSA client, was formed in 2017 by Kalyan. He has over 25 years experience in clinical biostatistics, having worked at both big pharma (Merck and BMS) and CROs (Vislation, INC Research and West Coast Clinical Trials). Kalyan is an accomplished presenter and presented an overview of biostatistics and the role that data management and biostatistics have in drug development.

Please join us next month on March 16 at 7:00 p.m. Wessam Sonbol, CEO of Delve Health, an e-clinical technology platform service provider and client of GLSA will spend 10 – 15 minutes talking about their approach to patient-centered hybrid and decentralized studies in drug development.

ATTENDEES (bolded names were first time attendees):

Kalyan Ghosh, Inference Inc,
Andy Mulchinski, Symbio
Justin Gundelach, Mayo Clinic
Pauline Luong, Creative Clinical R & D
Chris Bergey, NaviDx
Brian Langin, Matrix Medical
Ravipal Luthra, University of Miami College of Medicine
Jon Matheus, A.T. Pancrazi Real Estate Services, Inc.
Chris Matheus, Global Life Sciences Alliance & FOCM
Denise McNerney, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Joe Buser, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Zulma Varela, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Holly Cliffe, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Sally Haller, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Hannah Lloyd, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Todd Nielson, Global Life Sciences Alliance

Screenshots of the attendees can be seen here:

https://globallifesciencesalliance.com/february-networking-meeting-summary/

November Networking Event Summary

One of the things I thoroughly enjoy about networking is meeting such interesting, fascinating people with different perspectives. This helps us understand and appreciate those differences and helps us re-consider our approach to certain things.

On November 17, the Global Life Sciences Alliance along with FOCM Networking held its monthly online drug and medical device development industry networking event.

Whereas last month we had a featured speaker – Heather Hollick on LinkedIn best practices; this time we just had general discussion and greeting of one another. While there were still a manageable number, I introduced each person and how I know them. There was also discussion and general agreement that when Merck and Pfizer get their oral dose antiviral medicines approved (whether emergency authorization or full approval); the COVID-19 pandemic will become very manageable and the world can return to our new normal; forever impacted but less restricted. (added since the 11/17 meeting – the identification of the Omicron variant may put a slow down on the return; however, early information indicates that while it’s easily transmissible, the symptoms are different and mild, such that as of Nov 30 in South Africa hospital where the doctor found the Omicron variant, no hospitalizations are attributed to it. And now just today, an FDA Advisory panel recommended approval for Merck’s anti-viral pill to treat COVID-19 and reducing hospitalizations.)

We then moved to the evening’s agenda. We had three rooms for people to go to depending on their interests. The three discussion topics were:

Clinical Trial Recruitment and Retention
Innovation and Technology
Networking

Heather Hollick chaired the Networking room. One discussion centered around how sales/business development people use it and consultant/subject matter experts use it to best fill their connection needs. Interestingly, several participants shared that they control their LinkedIn outreach and purposefully limit their contacts to a more easily managed subset (~1000) to maximize the depth of relationships. Several other participants use a more liberal approach and have grown their networks to over 10,000 contacts who then serve as “private wikis” allowing rapid access to large groups of professionals with multivarious experiences.

Please join us next month on December 15 and if you have a Christmas sweater – wear it!

ATTENDEES (bolded names were first time attendees, I think):

Heather Hollick, Rizers, LLC; Author of “Helpful, A guide to life, careers and the art of networking”
Mike Burrows, Burrows Life Science Associates, LLC
Lacey Clements, IMA Clinical Research
Kevin Boos, Rho
Valerie Roussin-Paradis, SkillPad
Edwin Gershom, Noble Life Sciences
Wessam Sonbol, Delve Health
Michael W. Young, biomedwoRx: Life Sciences Consulting
Nicole Yoon, Mediaiplus
Ires Alliston, Business Coach, Consulting & Marketing
Lindsey Summers, Green Key Resources
Chris Matheus, Global Life Sciences Alliance & FOCM
Denise McNerney, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Joe Buser, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Brandon Huffman, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Holly Cliffe, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Zulma Varela, Global Life Sciences Alliance
Sally Haller, Global Life Sciences Alliance

https://globallifesciencesalliance.com/news/

CNS Summit Conference 2021

The CNS Summit, a year-round community with an annual in-person Summit was held at the Encore Resort Boston Harbor. It was very well-attended with over nine hundred registered. There was a feeling of pent-up need for networking and reconnecting. It is quite apparent that participants at this meeting are enthusiastic to be attending in person. The joy and happiness of seeing friends, colleagues (past and current) and being able to freely move about and make new connections was palpable. There is such a willingness to hear about what each other is up to, has learned and is doing different since the last time we gathered in person.

Rapid antigen testing was conducted rapidly for Covid-19, and a negative test result (within about 15 minutes) indicated by a wristband provided, allowing access to the Summit. The testing was provided by CNS Summit in partnership with Care Access. The process went off flawlessly, a great testament to the Care Access and CNS Summit staff involved.

There were many exhibitors, patrons and sponsors. To see which companies participated, I recommend you go to the website: https://cnssummit.org/

Digital Biomarkers, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data, Patient Diversity, Real World Data were among many Spotlight topics. As an example, Sharecare and UCB presented real-world data on patients with Myasthenia Gravis. The insights learned, the new endpoints discovered and the capabilities of the smartphone in such trials was impressive.

Below is the expanding list of companies that define themselves as DCT clinical trial service providers. Go to https://www.dtra.org/ Decentralized Trials & Research Alliance to fully appreciate the expansion of companies and organizations in and/or getting into the decentralized research segment of our industry.

Curebase	Circuit Clinical
Medable	Science 37
TrialBee	Thread
CaptureProof	Care Access
Clinical Ink	DataCubed Health
Medocity	Medidata
ShareCare (SmartOmix)	Science 37
	SiteRx

If you are interested in the CNS Summit community and the opportunity for interacting within it year round, you can apply at the organization website, which is listed above in paragraph 3.

And on a sad note, Medidata co-founder, Glenn DeVries who attended and presented at the conference passed away November 11 in a private plane crash in New Jersey.