The Effective Statistician - in association with PSI

What is medical affairs? Launch and Lifecycle? How has this area evolved over the last 2 decades? What is the current state across the industry in terms of the role of statistics in this space?

When there is one topic, which is really hot, it's causal inference. I've got in contact with it about 20 years ago when analysing observational studies and when nobody working on clinical trials would consider it. But now - after the introduction of the estimands framework - this becomes part of every statisticians toolkit. Today, we have one of the world leading experts in this field as a guest...

The guest in this episode represents the sponsor of this show – Nigel Howitt – current chair of PSI.

In the modern workplace, conflict has become a difficult topic. After all, conflict is antithetical to teamwork, employee engagement, and a positive company culture. Or is it? "No" is a sign of conflict and many avoid saying it by all means. But... Why is saying no so hard? How do we say no in the right way? When should we say no?

Subgroup analyses in combination with data visualisation is one of the hottest topics I can think about. And it hits us as statisticians during our careers again and again. We need to understand subgroups for efficacy reasons and safety reasons and it's a common question in terms of how consistent your drug works across the different subgroups. It gets even more complicated if you want to review i...

Publishing data is great, but we also want to measure the impact our work has beyond the additional entry in our CVs. During this episode, Mike and I discuss the tools Altmetric and Dimensions. These can help us to understand the reach and influence of clinical and scientific research beyond citations. Based on these, we can track the full journey, from idea to impact.  We touch on a number of int...

We leverage Real World Evidence in many different areas and there's are many different things that can go wrong with this. In today's episode, Rachel and I will discuss the things that we would like to have known before we started working with RWE so stay tuned to avoid mistakes we made in the past.

How do you start your week? Do you just rely on yourself or do you use some tools to organise yourself? learned a lot of productivity hacks from Michael Hyatt. I've listened a lot to his podcasts and I used some of his recommended tools to make my plans work such as the Full Focus Planner which is kind of a calendar and a to-do list together with goal setting tips and more.

There's a lot of community charity works we can all do but there is not a lot of work where we can maximise our impact by using our specific skills as programmers, as statisticians, and as data scientists.

What kind of leader do you want to be? What are the leadership principles? I learned about the concept of leadership principles from Gary Sullivan and it helped me to better understand what kind of leader I want to be.

I've been working on RWE most of my career and the clinical trial data for a while now. And 20 years ago, we would have never thought about merging them together but there's a lot of opportunities if we do this. The recent advances in analytical methods for combining evidence from RCTs and non-RCTs, and the development of new frameworks for the inclusion of RWE in HTA have provided a greater insig...

This year's PSI conference will be face to face again. I'm really excited for this. This is the best conference for statisticians that you can attend. If you are working in health care industry, there is no other conference like this. Attend this conference and meet friends and create new social connections! And you submitting a poster for the conference would be best!

During my early years, I was overwhelmed by so many trainings, SOPs, and processes. Only after my later years I learned what quality is really about. Gary fundamentally helped me and many others have a very different and more insightful/helpful/easy perspective about this topic.

What are typical data science methods that we are not yet using enough? Which areas will become important in the future in terms of data science?

Data visualisation is one of my favorite topics and today, I'll be interviewing someone who has helped me understand about data visualisation for years.

Is it possible to align business focus and self development at the same time? How can we create clear department or company goals or relate these to our goals?

I've been in pharma for 19 years now. I worked in various areas mostly in late phase area - post regulatory approval and phrase 3. I worked in different big and mid-sized pharma companies and worked in local, European, and global organizations. I've seen a lot of things in different areas and I learned a lot what works and what didn't work so well in pharma. I have learned a lot and now I want to...

What is the Enneagram? How will it help me work more effectively or be less frustrated? Lots of statisticians are introvert and detailed oriented. Does this imply, they will be largely in specific Enneagrams? Willene left the IT industry after 20 years and subsequently qualified as a Life Coach. She is a PCC (Professional Certified Coach), accredited by the ICF (International Coaching Federation)....

Over the last years, leaders of statistical organisations across Europe are meeting each year to talk about how the community can be moved forward and other important topics affecting statisticians in the industry. In 2021 was another meeting and I'm talking with Chrissie Fletcher about some of the topics covered during this years meeting.

In our standard graphics, we usually present summary statistics only. The exception is the Kaplan-Meier plot showing also individual patients. Showing individual patients effectively tells us so much more about e.g. clusters, outliers, and extreme values.

Do you think, you have nothing to add to a statistical conference? Are you afraid of sharing your achievements? Do you wonder, why you should put in the effort on top of your day-to-day job? All these thoughts and questions will be addressed in this episode with Paul Terrill, the chair of the scientific committee of PSI.  Beyond the questions above, we will also talk about the logistics and practi...

Have you ever been stuck in moving something forward? Do you wonder why others seem to be able to cut through the bureaucracy more easily? Are you frustrated by the politics around you?