Speaking at OCT UK & Ireland: The Athlete Mindset in Clinical Oncology

Early June brought an incredible opportunity to take the stage at OCT UK and OCT Ireland, contributing to the Clinical Trials in Oncology stream alongside some of the sharpest minds working in clinical research today.

The athlete mindset meets oncology

The session explored how the athlete mindset can optimise clinical operational delivery in early oncology, a topic closely aligned with my work at The Project Runner. Complex oncology trials demand exactly the qualities elite performance develops: the ability to read a situation fast, adapt under pressure, and keep a team aligned when conditions shift. As I shared during the discussion, complex oncology trials are the ultimate team sport, requiring agility and the ability to pivot at any given moment.

That framing resonated strongly in a room where trust, agility, awareness and collaboration emerged as the defining themes of the day.

A conversation bigger than any one presentation

What made OCT UK and Ireland stand out wasn't just the quality of the content, it was the quality of the conversations it sparked.

Emma Kinloch's presentation on patient advocacy was a timely reminder of how essential that perspective is in clinical trial design. It belongs in every room where decisions are being made, and adaptive trial designs, fundamentally agile by nature, are proving especially critical for rare cancer research, where unmet need remains significant.

Alex Churchill walked the room through the new Cancer Clinical Trials Accelerator (CCTA), a coordinated national operating model designed to strengthen patient access to innovative therapies and position the UK as a competitive, scalable destination for commercial cancer research. Seeing the patient voice embedded in its governance structure from the outset is exactly the kind of systemic shift the field needs.

Panels on designing trials that work for every patient and strengthening patient recruitment added further depth, reinforcing that inclusion criteria, clear communication, and awareness of the real lives patients are living outside of trials aren't peripheral considerations. They are the design brief.

What I'm taking away

The discussions and connections that followed are what I'll remember most. Whether reconnecting with colleagues from previous years or meeting people for the first time, there's something about this event that consistently creates the conditions for genuine collaboration, not just networking.

Thank you to the OCT UK team for a well-run, thoughtful event. The conversations started here feel like the beginning of something, and I'm already looking forward to the next one.

Dr. Yvette Henry is a business performance consultant and elite athlete based in Barcelona, working at the intersection of high-performance sport and organisational leadership. Learn more at theprojectrunner.com