Data monitoring committees for clinical trials and the role of the statistician

Interview with David Kerr

In today’s episode, we’re talking with a niche part of clinical research many statisticians never get actively involved in: DMCs.

David Kerr comes with a deep knowledge and long experience in this setting. We’ll speak about:

• What is a DMC?
• What is the role of a DMC statistician?
• What are the best skills and traits of the DMC  statistician

Join us while we discuss these questions with David and learn more about the following points:

• How did David get to this position as a biostatistician at a CRO?
• How is it made sure that information from the DMC stays within the DMC?
• What is David’s most challenging and most exciting experience he had while working in a DMC setting?
• When working on open-label trials, it is sometimes requested to “artificially” blind the date but have a DMC review the unblinded data. Has he come across these settings as well, and what’s the challenge he sees here?

References:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmcdavid/

https://www.cytel.com/blog/0-key-qualifications-for-independent-statisticians-reporting-to-the-dmc

David Kerr

Director, DMC Services at Axio Research

His day-to-day activities involve supporting Data Monitoring Committees (DMCs). DMCs review clinical study data throughout the course of the study to ensure the study is still ethical to continue, based on safety, efficacy, futility, and study conduct considerations.

He has worked on 130 studies and attended over 650 DMC meetings, in disease areas ranging from oncology and cardiovascular to obesity and rheumatology. His goal is to make sure the DMC has the best information available to help them make educated recommendations for the success of the trial and the protection of the study participants. 

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