In this episode, we’ll cover Lucy’s story about her work within PSI and how it helped her with her promotion. She shares tips and tricks to make it happen and we explore, what it takes to become an active PSI member.
Lucy is the conference chair for the PSI Conference 2018 in Amsterdam. As such, we also talk about various hurdles and benefits of running such a large event. Lucy explains what you can expect from this year’s conference and how learnings from previous conferences are implemented.
Learn more about the details of the program etc and register for the PSI conference 2018 in Amsterdam here.
Featured courses
Click on the button to see our Teachble Inc. cources.
Lucy Rowell
Lucy has been an active member of the PSI Scientific Committee for 6 years and this is her final year as the conference chair! Lucy is currently embarking on a 50% rotation into the UK Affiliate, supporting early pipeline molecules, from either a Medical or Marketing perspective.
During her 15 years at Roche, Lucy has enjoyed a 6 month secondment to the US and worked in a number of disease areas including: inflammation, virology, metabolism, infectious diseases and oncology projects, across all phases of clinical development and has been involved in designing a wide variety of trial designs implementing both frequentist and Bayesian approaches.
When not in work, you will most likely find Lucy out listening to live music, walking her dog Buddy or curled up on the sofa reading a good book with a glass of vino.
Transcript
Why should I get involved with PSI and what it’s like to run the PSI conference? Interview with Lucy Rowell
00:00
Alexander
00:10
Welcome to the Effective Statistician with Alexander Schacht and Benjamin Piske. The weekly podcast for statisticians in the health sector designed to improve your leadership skills, widen your business acumen and enhance your efficiency. In today’s episode, number 4, we talk about
00:29
why I should get involved with PSI and what it’s like to run the PSI conference, an interview with this year’s PSI conference chair Lucy Rowell. I’m very very excited to have Lucy on this episode today. So please stay tuned for the episode.
00:48
This podcast is sponsored by PSI, a global member organization dedicated to leading and promoting best practice and industry initiatives for state decisions. Learn more about upcoming events at PSIweb.org.
01:09
Hello, this is another episode of the Effective Statistician with Benjamin Piske and Alexander Schacht. Today, I’m very excited that we have an interview guest here, which is Lucy Roll. She was the chair of the PSI conference last year and is the chair of the PSI conference in 2018. I’m very happy to have her here. Hi, Alexander. Hi, listeners.
01:41
Okay, so maybe Lucy, you start with a short introduction of your name, what you’re working on, what your special interests are. So and also, what are you actually doing at PSI? Great question. So yeah, hi, everyone. My name is Lucy Rowell. I’m a statistician. I’ve been working at Roche for about 15 years now.
02:04
And I’ve been quite lucky in my career that I’ve done a range of different things. I’ve worked both in early and late stage development, and I’ve worked across a number of different therapeutic areas. And specifically at the minute, I’ve sort of got two different hats, one where I’m working in oncology and secondly, where I’m working in immunology. And up to recently, I was a global development team leader. Oh, that’s what they’re called here at Roche.
02:33
working on a number of different molecules. And in that role, I was able to lead a cross-functional team, which included clinical science, drug safety operations, regulatory, clinical pharmacology, and biometrics. There was a separate person on the team to represent biometrics. And my responsibility is really to lead that team to develop and deliver the best clinical development programs we could.
03:02
for molecules across all of the indications that molecule may be looked at. And now I’m doing a slightly interesting role where I’m doing 50% of my time still within the biostatistics group, but I’m also doing 50% of my time working within the UK affiliate, specifically in our pipeline team. So in that role, I’m actually doing no statistics whatsoever. And I’m actually doing a hybrid
03:32
medical manager and brand manager role for our very, very early development programs. And the aim through that really is to try and ensure that the UK needs are taken into account within our clinical development programs, trying to ensure that we’re producing ground-breaking medicines which we will be able to get reimbursed for UK patients so that they can gain access.
04:01
So I think I’ve been pretty lucky so far. Roche have been very generous to me and they’ve let me experience both interesting roles as a statistician, but over probably the last four or five years, roles that are not typically done by statisticians. And it’s really made me appreciate that the skill sets that we have as statisticians can actually be applied to many different parts of our industry versus just where we may typically think we.
04:31
we belong. And I think because of that, my sort of specific interests within the pharmaceutical industry and our role as statisticians specifically, I think, is trying to work out how we can better help teams and the organizations as a whole in decision making. And that could be just as straightforward as making sure we can communicate very well.
04:59
complex methods and large data sets in a very simple and easy way for people to understand. Or it could be using methodology and in Roche we call it the probability of technical success and I think other companies have similar terminology and similar ways which are really more using Bayesian techniques to help sort of predict the success of varying programs. And so I think that’s why I’ve tried to do a number of different.
05:29
roles throughout the organisation because that’s an area that I’m really interested in around learning how we can make better decisions. And specifically within PSI, to your last question, so I am the conference chair and this is my second year of doing that role and I’ve just been really, really lucky actually that I took over this role from Emma Jones and she had built the event up to be really quite successful.
05:59
Berlin was our biggest conference to date and a lot of that is thanks to the work that Emma did. And so between myself and the scientific committee, I think what we’re hoping to do is now keep growing the conference, just ensuring that delegates sort of see new and interesting content. And it’s surprising how long and complex that actually takes to do. But I’m
06:28
thoroughly enjoying my experience on the conference so far, and I’m looking forward to a successful 2018.
06:38
Well, I think the conference was already off a very good start with a record number of abstract submissions for the oral presentations. I think we had more than 80, didn’t we? We did. We actually had to turn a couple away, unfortunately, because it seems to always be the case that there’s always a number that come in after the deadline. We try and promote the deadline all over. People still unfortunately submit them late. So there were a couple extra that we…
07:08
we had to sort of recommend that they put in for a poster, but yeah, we had 80 submissions, which is the highest by quite a long way actually. Which is very, very different to, I think, a lot of conferences that where you see extensions to the deadline, possibly because they don’t get enough submissions for oral presentations. And here says, actually.
07:32
much more oral presentations, which probably leads to a much better quality in the overall selection of the speakers. So you have very, very long experience now within the pharma industry. How did you get actually initially involved with PSI? Did you directly start when you joined the industry or how did you start?
08:01
pretty much since I joined the industry, but I didn’t really get involved until about six years ago. And it was really by luck in a sense, there was a member of Roche who was already on the scientific committee and she was looking to sort of step down and do some other roles within PSI. And we just had a call out through sort of Roche to see would anybody be interested in taking that role on from her.
08:28
and I think I was one of the only ones who actually put my hand up and said, yeah, I’d like to volunteer. And so I’ve been on the scientific committee and I’ve only been on the scientific committee, so my view over this interview may be a little biased, I’ll admit, but you know having sat on the board now for a year I do know quite a lot of what’s happening in other parts, but it’s very much a scientific committee perspective.
08:57
interesting is that the scientific committee has a number of different things ongoing and you know we’re always aiming to put out high quality content whether it be the webinars or the one-day meetings or the conference and so actually as a member of that committee you get a really varied set of experiences that you’re working on and so I think that has been a really enjoyable experience hence why I’ve been doing it for so long.
09:28
So what does the scientific committee actually do? The scientific committee are responsible for all of our one-day meetings and we usually hold about four of those a year. And then the webinars. Now webinars, some of the SIGs, so the special interest groups also put out webinars. But usually the scientific committee put out three to four webinars also a year. We’re always trying to expand and do more.
09:58
but it’s usually in the region of about four webinars and then they also do the conference and I think that’s a piece that people often don’t realize. I think people think the conference is actually separate and it’s its own little committee but it’s completely not. It’s fully within the scientific committee.
10:19
Yeah, actually this year we seem to have much more webinars than in the past. When this goes live, there will be already a couple of webinars over and there’s a couple of new ones that is coming out. And just to say, I think the webinars are a really great asset for PSI because I think it’s a way for us to be able to engage with a much wider community. And I know we’ve…
10:47
definitely tried over the last couple of years to try and get more international speakers and the webinars is a way for us to be able to do that much more easier than our like one-day meetings where they’re typically held either in the UK or we have had for the last couple of years one-day meetings within sort of mainland Europe but it’s it’s more difficult to get you know a speaker say from the Japanese Health Authority to attend that but we might be able to get them on a webinar.
11:17
Yeah, webinars are really kind of low threshold. You can just, you know, dial it into your calendar very easily. So great, great way to, to learn and to agree yourself. So in terms of PSI, now that you have been so heavily involved, what, what does you what do you actually most like about PSI? What does it mean? So I think for me, it’s
11:46
community, I think that would be probably the word that I would generally use to describe it. I’ve met so many great people through being part of PSI, being part of the committees, attending events, attending the conference, both before I was part of PSI so actively and since. And I think people give so much of their time, their knowledge.
12:14
that always wanting to learn new things and build networks. And I think that’s really important. And also it’s always fun. And I think that’s something that we should never forget. That with all of the events and conference in particular, we want to make sure that people have learned something, but they’ve also had a fun time. And I think PSI really does engage with the fun side of things as well.
12:41
Yes, yes, for sure. I’m just remembering the Gala Dines of the last conferences that I attended. That was really a lot of fun. And not only that. I was just asking, how do you manage to do the work for PSI on top of your usual work? I mean, you were just bashing 50% and 50%, mixed 100%. So now PSI is coming. So I…
13:09
I listened is what I would say. So previous conference chairs, and I’ve been lucky enough to work with a number of them through the scientific committee. A lot of them have done this on top of their day job. And at certain times of the year, conference can literally become your entire life. Pretty much you’re working on it 24 seven. And I think one thing maybe just to highlight to listeners is that actually we’re working on conference for about each conference about two years.
13:39
So it’s about one and a half years on the run up. And then there’s about six months afterwards where we’re sort of finalizing the budgets and making sure all the contents online and uploaded, et cetera. Because of that, when I sort of said I was interested in taking on this role, I had some serious discussions with my manager who was extremely supportive. And I have been just very lucky that they have actually carved out, Rosh have carved out.
14:07
20% of my time to do conference, which includes the board meetings, etc. that I take part in and the scientific committee meetings. But without that, I think I’d really struggle.
14:23
In terms of board meetings, what do you mean by board meetings? So when you become the conference chair, you also get to sit on the PSI board. And usually the board meets every month. There might be in the summer a meeting that’s missed, but we usually have every month at least a two hour, three hour TC plus every other month, there may be a face to face meeting. And then PSI also do
14:53
a strategy day and the strategy day we have one year when it’s just the board for a one-day sort of face-to-face strategy day meeting. The alternate year we actually invite a broader range of the membership to come together and to think about what we want for the vision of PSI moving forward and then as a board we sort of take that on board and try and instill that within the varying different committees that are happening.
15:24
You mentioned your management was quite supportive of you taking on these responsibilities within PSI. What made them so supportive? What were their arguments of you working on PSI? What were your arguments for asking to work for PSI? Just to say, I didn’t have any additional time set aside until I took on the conference
15:53
how time consuming it was for other people. So I think there was two pieces to that. I think there’s one which is that actually they can see the benefit to sort of me as an individual. You get a very unique set of development opportunities when you take on that type of role and things that you probably don’t get to do in your normal day-to-day life and things you probably may never ever use again.
16:22
but it’s taught you something and you’ve learned something new from it. So I think there’s one that they definitely see as a development opportunity for me. And the same for any other, I guess, people who are working on these committees. But I think on top of that, there’s sort of the networks. So I’ve certainly built much stronger networks across the industry since doing this role. I don’t think I realized quite how much until I took it on.
16:52
And I think they see a lot of benefit in that, in terms of being able to have that wider connection of people to sort of tap into. And I think also just finally that, you know, PSI is run really by its members for its members. And I think Roche and both the management here within Welland in the UK and across both Switzerland and the US,
17:21
really appreciate that and think that there’s a lot we do that’s interesting. And if we want to learn from others, then we also have to be willing to share what we’re doing and to give people’s time and to keep this going. Because if you don’t have people who are engaged in companies that are happy to support, their staff members being engaged, then quite quickly PSI could sort of fall on its head. So I’m definitely very.
17:50
thankful. And I say these things very much from what I think they believe it to be. But it’s my opinion. Yeah, I think it’s really about community buildings that you mentioned earlier. And the better and stronger this overall community is across the industry, the better it is for statisticians overall, within the different companies.
18:19
So it’s really helping us as a function overall. What would you say then for yourself, but also as a recommendation for other statistician, not recommendation, but maybe, what should they bring to be involved? I mean, not necessarily as much as you are at the moment, but also just to get involved into the PSI a little bit to attend, to be part of the community. What do they need to bring or how can you encourage them?
18:48
to be part of the community. I think there’s probably a few really simple things that people can get involved in and don’t have to be really spend very much time doing that. And that’s actually just trying to help us as PSI build some of our social engagement sort of activities. So if you make sure that you’re following us on LinkedIn through the PSI group or with Twitter, and that’s at.
19:17
PSI updates and I’d really encourage people to like and share and actually comment on some of the things that we put out there. It’s something that we’ve spoken about many times on the PSI board is trying to get more people engaged and giving feedback and not being nervous and shy to give feedback because you know it is there, it’s open for everybody to see.
19:45
and nobody wants to sort of either look naive or ask a silly question. But no question is silly. We’ve all been there. I ask plenty of silly questions all the time. Really do not worry about that. We’re certainly not judging people. And I think that for me is like one of the easiest ways is just to please just comment and share and view and like and then give us feedback. Because, you know, as I say, we’re run by members for members. And if we’re not putting
20:14
the right sort of content or you’re interested in things that you might not be aware about, then please let us know. I mean, if you want to be involved in a committee, then you can always, you can contact me or you can contact Alexander or anyone else who’s part of one of the committees. Also on the website, which is PSIweb.org, there’s a tile on the front
20:44
click on that and you can register that you’re interested in a committee if you want to get involved in that sort of setting and there’s lots of different sort of committees and different levels of involvement you can sort of do depending what your interest areas are. I think for me personally what you would need to bring if you’re joining a committee specifically really is
21:11
a strong interest to share knowledge, to learn from others. You definitely need some enthusiasm and a willingness to just be able to jump in and sort of get involved straight away. We’re looking for members who wanna be really active and to help us sort of keep putting out great content and a lot of content. I mean, I think PSI put out a vast amount of content compared to sort of…
21:40
some other organizations of a similar size.
21:45
That’s true. Yeah, and especially kind of the enthusiasm, I think that is really key. So I have seen that I joined a couple of initiatives where I just wanted to learn more about it. And I’ve seen a couple of other people that had the complete same strategy, so joined certain initiatives just to learn about it.
22:15
And I think that’s a completely valid starting point. So you don’t need to be an expert in, let’s say, benefit risk to join the benefit risk special interest group. Absolutely. And we’re all new when we start. So don’t be scared to put your hand up. And it always helps also to have some people that come in with a fresh view on things that
22:44
make sure that all the communication is in a way that it’s also easy to understand for people that are not that kind of experts in these kind of fields. So we have talked a lot about your involvement with PSI and of course your biggest involvement is actually the conference that is starting at the early June.
23:11
And it’s starting actually in a very, very nice city, one of my favorite cities in Europe, Amsterdam. How did you actually come up with this location? So very much similar to your viewpoint, Alexander, it’s a beautiful city. So it was definitely when we wanted to consider. There was a little reluctance, I must say, originally with choosing Amsterdam because there’s not a huge amount of farmer there.
23:40
compared to some other countries like Germany, when we initially picked Germany for the very sort of first EU conference. But Amsterdam is beautiful. It’s a major transport hub. So that’s really important for us when we’re picking a location, that it’s somewhere that everybody can get to easily, no matter where you’re coming from. And then some more of the boring stuff, like it actually wasn’t a particularly expensive city when we were looking at venues.
24:10
And also we wanted to do, or I wanted to do, a few different potential things with Amsterdam. And we managed to get a venue that was sort of within our price bracket, allowed us to actually have a conference venue that wasn’t so big that we would need like two or 3000 delegates attending. And it’s just a very unique and beautiful building, the Burs van Bellage.
24:40
I have a little bit of a hook on an old sort of classical buildings versus sort of new contemporary building. So I was almost, as soon as I walked in, and it’s the old sort of stock exchange building, so I was almost sold as soon as we walked in. I tried to be a little bit more unbiased, but it was hard not to feel a real great pull to that venue.
25:09
other people who like sort of old fashioned architecture are going to really, really love the setting as well as just the fact that we’re in Amsterdam. And we’re right in the heart of Amsterdam with this venue. So you can you can sort of walk around and and see a lot of things very quickly.
25:27
Yeah, that’s actually a very nice side about Amsterdam. I was recently there with just by train and you’re directly in the middle of the city and you can walk to all the different locations. So very, very easy to reach and also very welcoming city. Yes. It smells a little bit funny. And it probably will in June.
25:55
Hopefully in the venue itself, it will smell beautiful.
26:04
I’m really looking forward to that. What will be your active responsibility at the PSI conference? Will you be sitting there and shaking hands with everyone coming in? Unfortunately not. Yes, so I would love to be there shaking hands and I do actually take part in the conference and I am there in all of the sessions. So that I definitely am there to do.
26:33
I guess the first thing is more that I sort of try and take a little step back to just ensure that everyone’s having the best experience possible. So I want to speak to our exhibitors and our sponsors to make sure that, you know, it’s what they were expecting and what they’ve signed up for, to speak to delegates, to find out what’s happening. And just to sort of walk around and experience it. And if there’s things that I don’t think are quite as I’d envisaged with some of the setup.
27:03
Then usually the day before MCI are our sort of event management company that we sort of work with both PSI and with the conference, but we have our own special conference group within MCI. And so we try and sort of rejig things around if things aren’t quite working to my expectation. There’s also little things that are going on in terms of we’ve had little hiccups before
27:33
thought they’d ordered a hotel room and they haven’t. And we needed to sort out some of those logistical pieces, which are not overly exciting, but they still need to be done. But I mean, usually when you’re actually at the conference itself, most things have been done. And it’s the time to sort of hopefully sit back, enjoy it with everybody else, and hope that all those months and years of planning have just sort of nicely running smoothly.
28:04
That will be my second question then is like, do you really manage to enjoy the conference then? Or are you there just for working purposes? So actually, that was I think, my biggest lesson learned from last year from 2017. I don’t think I realized actually how stressful it was during the three days or three and a half days. And so this year, I’m determined that I’m going to enjoy it more. So I definitely all of the sort of
28:33
The sort of keynotes, speeches and the actual events themselves in terms of the presentations, etc. That was all fine. I went to all of the sessions that I wanted to go to. In fact, I went to every single session there sort of was. So I didn’t miss out on any content. So that was great. But there was always something sort of in the back of my mind. I just need to check this or I just need to make sure that’s okay. And definitely this year, I’m just not gonna
29:02
I’m not going to worry as much. And I think there’s a lot of boring operational logistical things, which you think you’ve got right, and you don’t necessarily know what you don’t know until it happens. That I’m already trying to make sure are fixed so that there’s more opportunity for just taking the conference in and enjoying it rather than always having something in the back of my mind that I think I just need to check that’s okay.
29:33
So you have put this conference again on a special theme of the conference. What’s that theme about and how did you actually come up with it? Yeah, so the theme this year is breaking boundaries in drug development. And actually we take a similar approach each year to this. So we just ask all of the scientific committee members to think about
30:02
themes and ideas that they’d like to see at the conference. And we’ll have reviewed all of the feedback from the previous year to sort of get an idea of sort of ideas or themes that we think will be interesting. And then everyone just submits as many ideas as they want. It’s really quite straightforward. And I think we had about 20 for 2018 and then all of the sub.
30:29
the scientific committee members, I think we gave them three votes so that they could vote for a number of different ones and whichever theme had the most won. And this one actually won by quite a large margin. And I think for me, I was really pleased. It definitely wasn’t my idea. This came from someone else on the committee. We’ve got a couple of people on our committee that are really great with coming up with short catchy names.
30:58
So they’re a real great asset for this sort of thing and for trying to come up with quirky names for some of the sessions at conference. But I think it really reflects the sort of status that we’re in at the moment, where we’re needing to really challenge the status quo as statisticians and needing to be creative, and needing to ensure that we stop ineffective treatments as soon as we can, and we make sure that we can get efficacious and safe drugs.
31:27
to patients as fast as possible. And to do that, I think we’re gonna have to break some of the normal cycles we might think about. And so I do think actually the theme, even though we hadn’t necessarily thought of it like that in advance, really nicely resonates, I think, with where we are at the moment in the industry.
31:52
And I think this also leads to the two keynote speakers that will be there at the conference. So one from actually from Amsterdam or from the Netherlands and actually another one from the US. So tell us a little bit about them. How do they fit with the overall theme of the conference? Yeah, so I think when we try to come up with the keynote speakers, we try to come up with ideas of people who…
32:21
who could potentially bring a slightly different viewpoint to what the norm may be, but who are gonna get us engaged and excited about what’s gonna be coming on that day, as well as sort of what’s gonna be, hopefully gonna motivate us when we get back to our day jobs after the conference is finished. And we try and make sure that they speak to, or they’ve got…
32:47
themes that are going to run with the overarching theme of conference. And so Steve Rueberg from Eli Lilly, that one actually was really, really straightforward, thankfully. He was one of the first people that came out as a potential speaker based on the sort of conference theme. Really because a lot of the work that he had…
33:12
done in Eli Lilly over a number of years, and you probably know this even better, Alexander, you may even want to comment on this, has really been trying to break down the role of the statistician. And I think that really holds a strong place for me personally. And the Enterprise Data and Analytics group, I think, looks to seek to foster this sort of analytical mindset, to think about creative and novel applications of analytics.
33:40
to all different parts of the business. And I think in our ever-changing industry where we’re just getting more and more and more data coming from all different areas and not just from sort of clinical trials or from real world data, just from sort of all over. I think there’s a lot that we can learn from Steve and the work that he had been doing at Eli Lilly. And I think that’s gonna be hopefully a really exciting and engaging.
34:10
So we’re really, really pleased that he’s going to be attending. And then it wasn’t quite the same thing with Nupur Kohli. We found her, or I found her, because we were trying to find a speaker who really could talk about a sort of higher level thinking of what’s going to happen in healthcare overall? What’s that future potentially going to look like?
34:39
And then sort of from there, how we as sort of statisticians and the pharmaceutical industry are gonna sort of fit into that. And what I was quite interested about actually was that the Netherlands has a really, really high rating for healthcare. And given that we’re going to be in the Netherlands, it seemed like a good opportunity to try and find a local speaker who could try and sort of
35:08
bring in that local perspective about the Netherlands and how the healthcare system and how they’ve managed to get that really successful, but also having a futuristic view for us wider within the industry about what we need to sort of be prepared and ready to adapt for. And NAPUR sort of fitted that really, really, really well. Another thing for me that was actually really important this year was to have a female keynote speaker.
35:37
We had two male keynote speakers last year and obviously Steve is male. So I did want to make sure that we did have a balance there. I think looking at her YouTube videos, it could be an interesting kickoff to the conference. That’s something that we’ve tried to do for the last few years.
36:05
is sort of have the very opening speaker be somebody who’s a little bit more not farmer statistics related exactly, but that their ideas and concepts will sort of feed into what our sort of roles as statisticians will be. So she’s very excited about taking part and about what PSI are sort of doing.
36:34
And I’m certainly really excited to see what she’s gonna do and bring and I hope other people are gonna find it equally engaging. But I don’t know if there’s anything extra you want to add about Steve Alexander or…
36:47
Yeah, I think both speakers will be very, very engaging. And as you said, Steve has really promoted statistics far beyond the clinical development work. So he got statisticians involved in all kinds of different parts of the company and through his business analytics point of view and things like this, to the point where now we have actually a formal statistician
37:18
within Lilly, which is Aarti Shah, and she’s actually reporting now directly to our CEO. So we have now a former statistician sitting in the executive committee, which is, I think, maybe a little bit unusual. But like you are also taking over very unusual roles within your company.
37:47
example of stat decisions that can be very successful outside of their, let’s say, core function. So we are already quite advanced in the time. So I would like to wrap this up now a little bit, but there’s one really important question that still is on my list and on my line. So you have
38:16
your time into PSI, especially into the conferences. So how has that impacted you personally? Would you do it again? Great question. I’m not quite sure I know a definite answer to it. So I think for me, personally, I thought it was already fairly organized, etc. But this has taken it to a whole new level.
38:45
And there’s like weird things like I now know all about the tax system in the Netherlands. So anybody who wants to know about that, come and find me at conference, we’ll have a drink and I can bore you to death with some of those little bits of information that you just never knew you ever needed to know about. But it has also actually helped me personally with promotions at work. I think, you know, the recognition of what
39:13
PSI is the impact it has and being sort of heavily engaged in, involved in that. Roche have really sort of seen that as a sort of interesting set of skills that other people may not have and it has, I think, helped me. It’s sort of very much in getting promotion at work a year or two ago. I mean,
39:41
I think in terms of would I do it again, et cetera, last year, I’ll be quite honest, I was completely in favor of suggesting to the board that we go to a Fuse model where people only chair for one year, just given the time, commitment and effort that it takes to do this. That being said, I think now that 2018 has sort of really fully kicked off.
40:09
part way through last year, it’s actually much more enjoyable this year already than it was that first year. And so I think now I’m back in favor of the current PSI model where you sort of you co-chair for one year, you chair for two years and then you co-chair for the final year. So give me a second to just cough. So I definitely need a break.
40:38
I’ll definitely admit that after Amsterdam, I certainly need a little break from conference. I’ll definitely be supporting Kate Taylor from Amgen who’s going to take over for the 2019 conference and she’s sort of supporting and following me through 2018 to get experience and see what it’s like. And then I certainly wouldn’t say no to doing it again. So I think that’s a good sign I probably would have done last year, but now I’m in a different place.
41:08
And it’s certainly a really, really interesting opportunity for people. You don’t get to do a lot of the stuff that you do for conference in your day to day life. And so, I mean, I was organizing my wedding before I took on this and I thought, oh, it’s going to just be like that. It’s going to be just the same. I’m going to have this nailed down. Don’t worry. Wrong. Just so completely wrong. So I would definitely, you know, if you have
41:38
an interest in not just event planning, because I know that’s what it sort of sounds like, but being able to lead and organize teams and to be responsible for trying to think about some of the creative vision of what the conference is going to be like. Especially one thing I’ve learned, and specifically actually from you, Alexandra, is about the importance of the communication strategy for conference. That’s one thing we’ve really tried to put into place this year.
42:08
much more than we had last year. So if you’re sort of interested in doing those sorts of things then definitely think about putting yourself forward for being conference chair in future years. It’s certainly a worthwhile experience though from my experience you might not appreciate that till you’re in your second year.
42:35
Thanks so much. And before you want to be a conference chair, maybe you should first just register for this year’s conference and join us all in Amsterdam. And if anyone ever wants to know anything more about the conference or about anything else, then I’m always more than happy to take emails or calls. So please always feel free to get in contact.
42:59
Yeah, so just visit PSIweb.org and you’ll easily find the conference there. Thanks a lot. Thanks so much for this interview. That was very, very enjoyable. And see you all at the conference. Thanks. See you all soon. Thanks, Lucy.
43:22
same piece.
43:33
your career as a statistician in the health sector. If you enjoyed the show, please tell your colleagues about it.
Join The Effective Statistician LinkedIn group
This group was set up to help each other to become more effective statisticians. We’ll run challenges in this group, e.g. around writing abstracts for conferences or other projects. I’ll also post into this group further content.
I want to help the community of statisticians, data scientists, programmers and other quantitative scientists to be more influential, innovative, and effective. I believe that as a community we can help our research, our regulatory and payer systems, and ultimately physicians and patients take better decisions based on better evidence.
I work to achieve a future in which everyone can access the right evidence in the right format at the right time to make sound decisions.
When my kids are sick, I want to have good evidence to discuss with the physician about the different therapy choices.
When my mother is sick, I want her to understand the evidence and being able to understand it.
When I get sick, I want to find evidence that I can trust and that helps me to have meaningful discussions with my healthcare professionals.
I want to live in a world, where the media reports correctly about medical evidence and in which society distinguishes between fake evidence and real evidence.
Let’s work together to achieve this.
