Enthused by PHUSE (Monday)

For many in the European Life Sciences Statistical Programming (and associated) Communities, this week kicked off with the PHUSE EU Connect Conference at the ICC in Birmingham.

The morning keynote from Naomi Sesay FRSA was a perfect way to get the conference going. Naomi shared her often personal reflections of the importance of diversity and inclusion and challenged the audience that by not embracing diversity in the workplace, we are leaving innovation on the table, so to speak. It was a perfect start to the event and gave all attendees some useful pointers and tactical advice on how to make every single interaction and communication an inclusive one and therefore allow every individual to have the opportunity to perform at their very best. Another takeaway for me from her presentation was her effective use of PowerPoint slides... slides which had minimal words, and meant that we really leaned into what she was saying and followed her narrative closely - less is more when it comes to content/text on slides and this was an excellent reminder of this.

Other highlights from the day included:

1) A glimpse into how the Lundbeck team are tackling R Validation with a pragmatic presentation by Christian Schlicht Christensen discussing some of the practicalities involved - Presentation link

2) A very forward thinking presentation from Alberto Montironi from 优时比 who discussed how his organization have jumped on changes in the statistical programming landscape (eg, shifts towards open source etc) and used this as a catalyst to have a holistic look at People, Process and Technology as it relates to building a statistical programming department for the future. In todays presentation, Alberto double clicked on the people aspect with an investment in new junior positions and a plan to support that - Presentation link

3) sowmya singuluri from 诺华 reminded us all on why the statistical programming role is a pivotal one in terms of expediating submissions and took us on a logical journey to explain where the statistical programmer can positively input during study set up, conduct and close out/CSR - Presentation link

4) A thoughtful and calm presentation from Sascha Ahrweiler from 拜耳 was in keeping with the session theme of 'Stoic OS: Installing Ancient Wisdom for Holistic Leadership in the Digital World where he discussed his learnings from embedding Stoicism principles into his leadership and daily work style. Sascha's key to starting the day off on the right foot, was to have a family reading session of the 'Daily Stoic' book by Ryan Holiday and judging by the audience positive reaction to his talk, I think many others may follow his lead here - Presentation link

The eClinical Solutions team of Achilles Zaras , Farzana A. and Obi Madugba also had a successful day exhibiting with a lot of curiosity around the #elluminate data cloud and what added flexibility, automation and governance a multi-lingual SCE that is also fully embedded into broader CDR platform can offer an organization, versus using standalone solutions for the same and then having to 'manage' the integrations and associated overhead!

Tomorrow also looks set to be a cracker if the agenda is anything to go by, including our very own Achilles Zaras who will be presenting on 'The Human in the loop: Accelerating AI/ML Effectiveness for Clinical Data. Thanks to the PHUSE committee for such a well organized event.

What were your highlights from Monday if you attended?