All of the winning projects in their own words:  

2026 Participant Engagement Award Winners: Biogen, Proximity Health Solutions, and BlackDoctor.org 

The “Better Together: Sharing Our Lupus Stories” webinar series is a bi-weekly, one-hour digital event designed to educate and empower female, African American, and other underrepresented lupus patients, as well as their caregivers and families. Each session features expert-led discussions hosted by both a female African American lupus patient and a rheumatologist, focusing on topics that matter most to the lupus community. The series aims to increase disease understanding, build trust in clinical trials, and position Biogen as a trusted resource for patient-centric information. By creating an interactive, open dialogue and sharing personal journeys, Better Together provides a supportive environment where patients can learn, connect, and consider clinical trial participation. Better Together has significantly deepened participants’ understanding of lupus, disease management, clinical trials, and related life topics such as comorbidities, nutrition, and career management. The series serves as a vital meeting place, fostering a sense of togetherness and emotional support that is essential for lupus patients. By providing a safe space for sharing of experiences and learning from peers and experts, Better Together empowers patients to live fuller, healthier lives and make informed decisions about their care.                  

2026 Site Innovation Award Winners: TrialScreen and The Association of Multisite Research Corporations (AMRC) 

Informed/motivated patients, caregivers, and managing physicians see the hope that a clinical trial can bring, and the right thing to do is to provide them with a mechanism to find a clinical trial, evaluate fit, and connect with a clinical trial site.  With the introduction of AI and other new technologies, it is now feasible to surface study information from all global public registries in a way that people can understand who a study is for and what participation involves before sharing any personal details. But this often breaks down in the last mile - connection of the engaged patient to a clinical trial site. We have technology to automate the referral workflow, but with less than 20% of emails from public clinical trial registries being correct, the site will never receive the referral.  At TrialScreen, we are partnering with the Association of Multisite Research Corporations, AMRC and other organizations to update site contact details at no charge, so that patients searching for a trial can be connected. 

2026 Best of Show Winners 

Overall Winner: Biorce’s Aika   

Aika is redefining how clinical trials are designed, justified, and executed. Aika is the first AI platform purpose-built for end-to-end clinical trial design and optimization. Unlike generic large language models trained on internet data, Aika leverages a multimodal AI architecture processing structured and unstructured data from approximately 1 million clinical trial protocols, regulatory submissions and outcomes databases across all major therapeutic areas. The platform transforms clinical development from a fragmented, manual process into an integrated, AI-augmented workflow. Research teams access evidence-based insights across protocol design, feasibility assessment, contract negotiation and budget estimation, while maintaining regulatory transparency. It is traceable to specific source protocols, enabling teams to defend decisions before discussing with regulators. Technical specifications Architecture: Multimodal AI combining LLMs, NLP and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Data foundation: ~1 million clinical trial protocols across all therapeutic areas Infrastructure: Google Cloud Platform with NVIDIA AI compute; GxP-compliant, SOC2 Type II certified Core capabilities: Protocol element extraction, comparative analysis, automated scoring systems, generative AI for protocol drafting, citation-level explainability What's new Aika is evolving beyond protocol design into full clinical execution, introducing AI-powered contract negotiation, CDISC- and USDM-compliant protocol digitalization, and automated budget estimation, turning weeks of manual work into hours. Upcoming releases expand Aika from protocol design into operational execution: Protocol generation & evaluation AI-powered contract negotiation Clinical protocol digitalization - USDM and CDISC-compliant Automated budget estimation These capabilities transform Aika from a design tool into a comprehensive platform supporting the entire clinical development lifecycle. Aika doesn’t just accelerate clinical trials. It makes better trials possible. 

Rookie of the Year: ZigZag QA Site Quality Assessments  

Site Quality Assessments (SQA) is a risk-intelligence platform that standardizes how Sponsors and CROs assess, compare, and strengthen clinical site quality—before issues become deviations, data rework, or inspection observations. Where oversight is often episodic and subjective, SQA makes quality signals continuous, comparable, and action-oriented. SQA combines a targeted, role-based questionnaire with analytics that translate site inputs into a transparent Quality Scorecard and portfolio dashboard. Critical-to-quality domains include PI oversight, informed consent, safety reporting, investigational product accountability, source-to-EDC data flow, delegation/training, and computerized system controls. Responses are normalized on a 0–3 concern scale, weighted by CtQ importance, and surfaced as a Quality Tier with clear risk drivers and recommended actions. What’s new in this release: (1) reusable Sponsor and CRO templates with branching logic and “minimum-burden” question sets for consistent deployment across studies; (2) portfolio benchmarking with study/region/country heatmaps, trendlines, and automated re-tiering as signals change; and (3) an inspection-ready Evidence Pack that compiles scoring rationale, supporting responses, and tracked actions into an audit-traceable export. Technical specifications: secure web forms; SaaS (shared or private tenant) or managed deployment; configurable scoring, weights, thresholds, and alerts; role-based access; SSO/SAML; immutable audit logs; encryption in transit and at rest; and optional CSV/REST API import/export to connect with CTMS/EDC/QMS. SQA reduces burden through focused oversight and replaces subjective judgment with measurable, defensible signals—helping teams focus monitoring, training, and audits where they will have the greatest impact.  

2026 Best of Show Additional Winners 

Medidata for Medidata Protocol Optimization  

Medidata’s innovative Protocol Optimization solution, built on insights drawn from tens of thousands of historical clinical trials and 8000+ active studies worldwide, transforms trial design and execution by leveraging AI-driven capabilities to analyze study design and quantify the impact of protocol design decisions on operational outcomes like enrollment, retention, and cost. This solution can assess the impact on patient burden, site performance, and costs well in advance of the First Patient In (FPI), giving research and operations teams critical foresight into potential challenges. The solution, launched in June 2025, begins with industry benchmarking, flagging commonly used procedures, synthesizing procedure frequency and calculating the corresponding protocol complexity upfront. AI models use historical clinical trial data to simulate design trade-offs. The Patient Burden Index (PBI) incorporates many objective and subjective measures of the patient experience including: pain, hospitalization risk, procedure duration, and anxiety, enabling decisions to reduce patient burden without compromising endpoints. Predictive modeling then shows how protocol design changes are expected to impact burden and costs. This structured approach to protocol analysis significantly improves the protocol design process, decreases costly amendments and informs enrollment planning, leading to smoother, lower-cost trials that are easier on patients and sites.  

Innovative Trials for Innovative Trials Academy (ITA): Innovate & Educate  

At Innovative Trials, we know the real barriers to clinical trial recruitment and retention aren’t just logistical – they’re human. Public misunderstanding and low health literacy leave too many people – parents, students, community leaders – seeing trials as mysterious or risky, not as a vital step toward better health or even a career path they’ve never considered. The Innovative Trials Academy (ITA): Innovate & Educate changes that conversation outside trial sites and clinics, meeting people where they live, learn, and gather – in classrooms, community centers, and local groups. Launched in November 2025, ITA delivers age-appropriate, genuinely engaging clinical research education that demystifies trials, builds confidence, and sparks interest in careers from research nurses to recruitment specialists. Picture 9th graders running their own “mock trial” to grasp randomization and leaving inspired to join the field. Since launch, we’ve been developing three key enhancements to multiply ITA’s reach and impact: -Modular School Education Kit: A ready-to-teach pack – slides, activities, teacher notes – so any classroom can run ITA sessions independently. -Micro-Learning Video Library: Bite-sized videos for community groups to use on-demand, explaining trials in plain language anyone can share. -Engagement & Impact Dashboard (EID): Live, anonymized data showing who we reach, how their understanding grows, and what careers excite them most. These turn ITA into a practical, repeatable program that builds long-term trust in clinical research and a future pipeline of talent. That’s what “Innovate & Educate” means to us – and it’s the story we’re proudly bringing to SCOPE 2026 

Anju Software’s TA Scan 

TA Scan is a comprehensive, web-based clinical and commercial business intelligence solution that aggregates, connects, and analyzes global clinical trial data, presentation data, publication data, and many other data sources from the public domain into a single, intuitive database. 

This high-quality data, along with the granular semantic search capability of TA Scan’s interface, supports Clinical Operations and Medical Affairs teams to make more informed, data-driven decisions around clinical trial design, diversity strategy, feasibility, site identification, and KOL identification and management.