With growing budget pressures and the expectation to do more with less, negotiation is an essential skill for clinical development professionals. This practical, interactive workshop will help attendees approach negotiations with greater confidence, uncover what matters to the other party, and explore ways to create value within budget constraints while building stronger working relationships.
Through everyday examples, negotiation role-play, and peer discussion, participants will practice asking effective questions, navigating “no,” and trading concessions thoughtfully. Moving beyond familiar contracting scenarios, attendees will explore approaches they can apply to CRO and vendor conversations, workplace discussions, and everyday negotiations.
Key Learning Points
- How to approach negotiations with clear goals, confidence, and an understanding of when to walk away
- Practical questions to uncover hidden priorities, understand constraints, and explore flexibility beyond the initial offer
- Strategies to trade value and negotiate favorable outcomes within budget constraints
- How to navigate resistance while building trust and maintaining productive working relationships
- Opportunities to practice negotiation techniques and identify lessons to apply immediately
This session explores how the global pediatric clinical trials landscape is changing, with a focus on the current state of pediatric research, the practical challenges sponsors and investigators face in planning, initiating, and completing pediatric trials, and how the current global pediatric regulatory architecture plays out in practice. Current trends in pediatric trial planning and implementation will also be discussed.
Participants will leave with:
- A snapshot of where pediatric research stands today
- Practical considerations for managing burden in pediatric trials
- Best practices and recommendations for navigating pediatric trial challenges
Discover how artificial intelligence is transforming clinical research by streamlining processes from protocol design to regulatory submission. This session explores practical AI applications for overcoming recruitment challenges, ensuring ethical implementation, and shaping the future of oncology trials.
- Overcome Bottlenecks: Learn how AI breaks cycle inefficiencies in trial design and patient screening.
- Accelerate Recruitment: See how AI-driven models and molecular matching reduce screening time and failures.
- Implement Ethically: Understand frameworks for bias mitigation, data privacy, and regulatory compliance.
- Future Trends: Explore next-decade innovations like digital twins and foundation models.
Outcome: A candid, solution-focused discussion designed to help teams move faster and smarter.
During the past four decades, reliance and use of contract research service providers for drug development capacity and expertise have increased dramatically. During this period, sourcing models have evolved due to rising protocol scientific and executional demands and company-specific outsourcing strategies and preferences. Despite the long-time horizon and extensive collaboration with CRO partners, until now virtually no research has assessed the impact of various sourcing models on drug development program and clinical trial performance, cost and quality.
In 2026, the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (Tufts CSDD) conducted a robust study in collaboration with 13 pharmaceutical companies to gather empirical evidence characterizing outsourcing strategies and practices and their relationship with drug development performance, quality and cost. This session presents the results of this research and offers insights into optimizing drug development performance, cost and quality through more effective, fit-for-purpose use of sourcing models. This study also examined the relationship between sponsor choice of sourcing model and clinical trial performance; functions and capabilities typically outsourced, and clinical trial performance and number of vendors engaged.
