As I reflect on a great couple of days at CDISC in Milan, what stays with me is the conversations, the shared challenges, the desire for innovation, and the genuine passion in the room for getting the right treatments to patients as safely and efficiently as possible.

A lot of that energy was directed at the transition to TMF Standard Model V1, and I think it's warranted. When every TMF speaks the same language, good things follow: greater portability for M&A, stronger inspection readiness, higher overall quality, and (yes, it had to come up) a foundation that makes AI and automation genuinely easier to deploy and more effective.

But here's the part I keep coming back to. A standard is only as useful as the industry's ability to adopt it. Many sponsors and CROs are mid-flight on studies shaped by years of Reference Model conventions and local amendments. You can't (and shouldn't) unpick all of that overnight. Vendors who treat the transition as a switch to be flipped or a mandated migration will create more friction than they remove.

That's the principle we've built around at Phlexglobal: meet every study where it is. Whether a trial sits in Reference Model or Standard Model, it lives in the same system, and the things teams rely on, like automated classification and QC, reporting, completeness, automated inspection readiness, work exactly the same way. No second-class studies, no "it only works in Standard Model.": For every study.

And when a team is ready to move toward Standard Model, that's where Phlexglobal's combination of expertise, tooling and AI support matters most; not to rush the transition, but to make it smooth, deliberate and low-risk. That's the conversation I'd love to keep having.

So thank you to everyone who shared their time and their thinking in Milan. The destination is clear. What we owe each other now is a sensible route to get there.

Liam Corkhill, VP, Software Engineering

Liam Corkhill is VP of Software Engineering at Phlexglobal, leading the organisation’s AI, Cloud and Software Engineering teams. He joined Phlexglobal in 2017 and has been instrumental in the evolution of the PhlexTMF platform into a modern, cloud-native solution. Liam brings extensive experience in building and scaling SaaS products and engineering organisations. He has a strong focus on applying digital and AI-based approaches to improve operational efficiency, helping organisations to unlock greater quality and compliance from their TMF.