Micah Lieberman of ClinEco and CHI Speaks on the SCOPE Conference

Applied Clinical Trials: SCOPE Europe was held in Barcelona, Spain last October. Could you give our audience an overview of that?

Micah Lieberman: SCOPE Europe is interesting because it’s Europe, it’s not the US. Europe has its own thing and own set of challenges. And if I'm running global trials, what my market is telling me is number one, there are issues specific to Europe, even if you're running a global trial that is very important, it's an enormous market, a very complicated landscape with language, different regulatory bodies, etc. And I want to respect that and serve that community. A certain percentage of those people, whether you're at Roche in Switzerland, but you come to my US event, there's still a large percentage of people in Europe and all those different markets who are at small or midsize CROs that focus on a specific region that are in a biotech, a research center, an academic research center, or a hospital research center in Europe, they are important for my global audience, for my European audience, and for my US audience.

Five or seven years ago, we started running SCOPE in Europe. So last year, in October, I think we were five or 600 people, I don't remember exactly. We had four tracks the way we break people up by function. And it was great. Two days in Barcelona at the Intercontinental. Just a beautiful location, a really good place to sequester an amazing group of clinical trial executives, clinical ops, clinical innovation leaders, data analytics people, risk management people, patient recruitment people, and feasibility experts. We were sequestered for two days together in a beautiful hotel with really good case studies, amazing content, good networking, good food, let's be honest, cheap wine, let's be honest, better coffee, let's be honest. And we were able to accomplish a lot in two days. And I think that people left very happy, both with the content, the relationships they built, and everything else. And you ran a really good panel, a congratulations to you, Andy (Studna, editor, ACT), for kind of playing game with me and putting together a really good panel that you recorded and posted. All of that kind of makes it what it is.

One comment, which is kind of funny, as you heard some people like Mats (Sundgren, PhD, senior industry scientific director, i-HD [European Institute for Innovation through Health Data]), he's worked with us forever. He's been to the US SCOPE event forever. He knows a lot of people. And he's one of those people who says, “I kind of liked the European event. First of all, it's easier for me to travel to.” But I think it reminds him of what SCOPE US was 10 years ago. Right? I love both events, but they're different. SCOPE Europe: we’re five to 600 people, October 29th and 30th in 2024. So this coming year, we're back in the same hotel, the event will be a little bigger and instead of four rooms running simultaneously, we're going to break it up into six very core topics.

ACT: SCOPE US is coming up in Orlando, Florida in February. What can attendees expect this year?

Lieberman: SCOPE US is the 15th annual Summit for Clinical Ops Executives in Orlando, Florida, February 11, through the 14th, 2024 at the Rosen Shingle Creek, which is an amazing venue and Orlando is so easy to fly into. And you just get there and then you show up and for four days, there's 3500 of us execs at the Rosen for four days. Now, one thing to note is it will usually start on a Monday, but this year, we're starting on a Sunday. So February 11 is Super Bowl Sunday and we're going to play that up, we're going to have a tailgate party, and it's going to be really cool. So everybody's showing up Saturday night or Sunday morning, February 11. We stay for four days, we have almost 500 speakers, and more than 400 presentations and panels. There's actually 29 conference tracks; 29 topics we're covering that are unique, 850 different organizations, and I think 30 countries. And the exhibit halls are amazing. The exhibit hall, the technology, and the services; it's a key part of it. This is not a trade show and I don't think I would call it a trade show, but there's 240 booths and exhibits. And when you go into the hall, it takes four days to see it all. And you need to see it all because these people and these companies are a key partner in solving the problems in industry. The relationships between the sponsors, the CROs, the sites, the vendors, the technology vendors, and the consultants; it's a really collegial atmosphere, and a lot happens at SCOPE.

So anyways, 3500 people over four days. If you go to scopesummit.com and go to the homepage and just scroll down to the “conference at a glance” and click on that, there's an easy downloadable PDF that gives you a high level view of all of the things that are happening. I would say that one thing, that there's a few awards that are new this year. Every year, we've done the participant engagement award, we're doing that for the eighth year and honor Jerry Matczak. First year for the sight innovation award, we're doing the best of show awards again, and then also the second year we're doing the investor conference, and first year we're doing the start-up pitch contest within the investor conference. So there's a lot happening, but the way I view it is it's four days, a bunch of executives from industry and if you look at our demographics on the site, you'll see who actually comes, not by name, but type of company, etc. These are the right people, these are the people that are really doing interesting things. And we've really tried to focus on the quality of the content, so people are really sharing stories that are relevant case studies, but also panels and discussions where they share their challenges. So I recommend getting there a little early because Sunday is fun. Besides business, we have golf, and we have all kinds of stuff and then we kick off the keynotes. And then Sunday evening is a big tailgate party for the Super Bowl and then Monday morning, all day Tuesday, and Wednesday all day.