Milan. Great city. Great food. And another CDISC + TMF event that gave me plenty to think about. The good news is a long flight home to the US gives me the opportunity to sort my thoughts. The event was truly energizing, it’s always nice gathering with large groups of TMFers!

AI is everywhere, and that’s a good thing for the most part. The energy and investment were impossible to ignore, it was super exciting. We’re headed in the right direction. But the discussions got me thinking about the gap between ambition and application.

There is a broad promise of AI everywhere. Solutions that can seemingly do everything, for everyone. I get it, it's a great story and makes sense to spend time on, but TMF isn’t a generic problem, and I think the industry is starting to recognize that.

The clients I speak to aren’t asking to have their world transformed. They’re asking for help with specific, and very real TMF challenges. (e.g. inspection readiness that doesn’t cause their team to lose sleep at night, catching completeness and quality issues early, instead of weeks before an inspection).

The use cases that are exciting me are truly the focused ones, which reduces the manual burden of stretched teams. Phlexglobal is doing some impactful things in this area solving real, practical problems with clear success factors. This is where I think the TMF will be successful. Not moving away from AI, but towards AI that's backed by genuine domain expertise and built around what sponsors and CROs need day in and day out.

We're on the right track as a TMF community. I think we just need to continue to ask ourselves the hard questions on what problems really need to be solved and how well we're solving them.

Would love to hear your takeaways, TMFers, and share all the cool things Phlexglobal is doing with AI and TMF! Feel free to drop me an email.

Seth Pearl, Head of Commercial

Seth joined Phlexglobal in 2014, bringing nearly two decades of Life Sciences experience. As Head of Commercial, he leads Phlexglobal's go-to-market strategy, driving high performance and growth. He has built a strong reputation for developing strategic partnerships and delivering value to leading biopharmaceutical organizations.