The Effective Statistician - in association with PSI

Some thoughts about why we do what we do Find the episode page here! In this very short episode, I'm stepping back from the day-to-day business and reflect about why we go to work every day. I have a very personal story about it, that helped me to see things very clearly and I'm sharing this in this episode. Further, many of you will listen this during vacation time and thus, I'm also touching on the importance of taking a break. There is no episode next week as we take a summer break as well.

Interview with Nicky Welton theeffectivestatistician.com Indirect comparisons provide evidence, when no direct clinical trials are available. However, the different approaches come with various limitations. Some more recent approaches take into account the baseline characteristics to reduce the bias in the estimates of the treatment effects. In todays episode, I'm talking with one the worlds experts on this topic - Nicky Welton - who has published extensively in this field. Starting from the basics of indirect comparisons we move into the most recent research in this area. These new approaches will help to better understand treatment effects in specific populations of interest. Possible applications run from designing phase II or III studies up to re-imbursement dossiers and commercialization efforts.

Interview with Lovisa Berggren theeffectivestatistician.com Every statistician in the health sector must know about estimands and how to apply the estimand framework. In this episode we introduce the topic using a case study. We’ll cover How does the HTA system in Germany work? What are the 4 critical elements for the estimands framework? How does the application of the estimand framework differ in study planning vs post-hoc?

theeffectivestatistician.com Today I'm looking back at the PSI conference 2018 in Amsterdam. You'll learn about my personal highlights and key take aways from the conference. I have also interviewed some interesting people from the conference for you to get some feeling about the atmosphere at this amazing event. In this episode, I'm covering the following episodes: Nupur Kolis key note speach in the plenary session about “The Future of Healthcare: Trends, Opportunities and Challenges“ Interview with Nelson Kinnersley about the workshop "Owning Your Own Development" The session "Not Just Another AE Table" with an interview with Maria Costa about "Personalised Benefit-Risk Assessment" The workshop "Learn How To Swing: Hands on Workshop on Preference Elicitation in the Age of Personalised Medicine" The session "Estimands Case Studies" The session "Gone in 60 Seconds (Poster Review)" including an interview with Jules Hernandez-Sanchez The keynote by Steve Ruberg about "Statistics and Data Science: Is Six the Same as a Half-Dozen?" The workshop "Improving Your Communication" The session "Patient Centricity" The session "What Matters Most? - A Scientific Advice Role Play" including an interview with Mouna Akacha The session "A Picture Says More Than 1000 Tables - Interactive Data Review" The session "Regulatory Town Hall"  

theeffectivestatistician.com As a statistician we delegate all the time with programming being probably the most prevalent example. In this episode, we start by showing in two personal examples how delegation improves your productivity amazingly or how it can lead into complete disaster. Furthermore we cover the following questions: Why is delegation so important? Why are not only managers delegating? Why should I delegate, if I can do it myself? What task can I delegate? How can I delegate appropriately? Why are many people not delegating more actions? By listening to this episode, you will also learn about these 4 principles of delegation: Any task should be done by the most junior team member possible. Delegate tasks in such a way, that they are interesting for the people to work on. Specify what goal you want achieved, defining together what a great outcome looks like and support as needed, but resist the urge to tell exactly how to achieve the goal. Delegate deliverables not tasks The episodes concludes with a discussion on the how to create an environment where your team members thrive, you successfully reach great project outcomes, people are motivated and engaged, and both team members and leadership wins.

Interview with Julia Carter theeffectivestatistician.com In this episode we have our first non-statistician as a guest. Julia has build her own consulting and training company Zestfor. She and her team specialise in developing Training programmes and resources scientifically tailored for technical markets – including Pharmaceutical, IT, and Life Sciences. Getting things done through others is a key part or even the definition of leadership and her clients face often the same situation like statisticians. They need to convince people rather than commanding them. In this episode, we cover the following topics: Why statisticians need to be more influential? Is influencing actually something bad on inappropriate? What characterises an influential person? Which practices help statisticians to increase their influence? Many statisticians are more introvert. As such, how can they deal with more extrovert business partners from other functions? Relationships are key for influencing without authority. Trust is key for building these relationships. What can statisticians do, to generate more trust? Networking is another aspect of building relationships. What actions to take to build networks? Many of us work in virtual settings to some extent. This poses additional barriers on influencing others as it is much harder to be heard and understood. Which techniques can we apply to overcome these hurdles?

Interview with Alan Brnabic on the statistician’s perspective theeffectivestatistician.com In order to make new drugs available to patients in Australia, a successful interaction with the PBAC – the Australian HTA body is needed. Alan Brnabic lives in Australia and collected a lot of experience with these submissions over the years. In this episode, we cover: the basics of understanding how the PBAC works, why a successful PBAC submission is important, what evidence is needed to have a successful PBAC submission, how much work is needed from the statistician’s side for the PBAC interactions, what are the typical challenges from the PBAC, when is a good start to get prepared for the PBAC work, and how is the data submitted to PBAC publicly available

theeffectivestatistician.com In this podcast episode, we discuss an important part of leadership - proactive behaviour. Or simply put - drive! As a statistician, you’re day-to-day approach about this topic will build up to long-term success. We discuss various aspects of drive including: how it relates to your goals, what it takes to think strategically, which role innovation has here, what practical steps to take to drive teams forward, which knowledge to acquire to lead teams successfully, how this relates to influencing, and how your attitude will play a big role in this.

Interview with Shafi Chowdhury - principles for good programming theeffectivestatistician.com Ok – not everything, but in this episode you will get all the tips to make sure, you avoid the most common mistakes and that your code looks professional. Shafi Chowdhury is an expert programmer who has developed a style guide, which his clients apply broadly. He regularly gives trainings on SAS programming and build his own company based on these skills. He walks us through the different points and clarifies, why they are important from an efficiency but also from a quality perspective. About Shafi Chowdhury I have over 20 years of experience as a statistical programmer in the Pharma industry. I worked for Pharma companies and CROs across Europe in many different therapeutic areas and in all phases of clinical trials before setting up my own consultancy firm. I believe knowledge should be shared and therefore I am a regular presenter at PhUSE conferences and regularly attend many other conferences including PSI conferences for Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry. I also provide bespoke training and have a website to allow users to learn just the module they need at that time. I specialise in reviewing processes and developing standards, tools, templates and macros to improve the expertise of individuals and efficiency of processes. As an independent consultant with all the proven experience behind me, I offer unbiased expert opinions which can be used by management to make their decisions. My aim is always to drive up Quality by Design. Specialties: Writing SAS programs to check, modify, analyse and report any kind of data.  Developing client specific template programs and generic macros. Developing bespoke training programs to produce well rounded programmers within weeks.    

Interview with Shafi Chowdhury theeffectivestatistician.com/on-building-your-own-company-interview-with-shafi-chowdhury In this episode, we’ll cover an amazing story by one of the best programmers and mentors I ever worked with - Shafi Chowdhury (www.shaficonsultancy.com). We’ll explore how it changed from being a freelance programmer only to building his company on the side. He had a great vision in mind, that drove him forward.   You’ll also hear about his approach to teaching and mentoring – or in general helping people do their job better. His abundance mindset inspires me a lot. Shafi explains, why and how he made his own job redundant in his own company.   Retention is a major cost driver and disrupts some companies a lot. You’ll learn how he manages to have nearly no turn-over in his company and how is approach to recruiting and training new employees fits in to this.   Further, we’ll cover how and why Shafi and his team is regularly presenting at different conferences. We’ll especially go deeper on this presentation at the PSI conference in 2017 about an amazing tool to analyse and visualize data at the same time. His approach to delivering all this innovation is very unique.   Finally, you’ll learn a lot about the leadership attitude, that helped him grow his business fast into a medium sized CRO with a very stable client base.   You can find out more about his company here.