Welcome to the Schools Homepage

Did you know…?

… that from initial discovery in the laboratory it takes on average 12 years to make a medicine available to patients?

Healthy
To make sure that a medicine is effective at fighting disease and safe to consume, pharmaceutical companies have to spend years rigorously testing it in clinical trials. Statisticians have a very important role to play in designing these trials and analysing the data collected to obtain the evidence needed to show the medicines work.

On this site you can explore how statisticians use their mathematical skills to improve patients’ quality of life and to save lives.

Introduction to Clinical Trials

Testing a medicine in clinical trials is a very long and expensive task, requiring pharmaceutical companies, doctors, hospitals, healthy volunteers, and real patients to work together. The video below, made by the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA), gives an insight into this journey.

Clinical Trial Quick Facts

  • Usually the first people to try out a new medicine are healthy volunteers. Healthy volunteers are used to find the maximum dose the body can tolerate, then this is used in trials on patients.
  • In a ‘gold standard’ clinical trial neither the patient nor the doctor knows whether the drug being administered is the new experimental one or the control treatment. This is called double blinding.
  • Clinical trials tend to be global, enrolling patients from many countries around the world.
  • It costs over $2.5 billion in research and development costs to bring a drug to market to be prescribed to patients.

Upcoming Events

PSI ToxSIG Webinar: Good statistical practices to tackle the lack of reproducibility in preclinical research

In this webinar we will explain the how to understand the sequences of issues and how to fix it in order to drastically improve the replicability of the results. Through example the presentation will cover concepts such as OFAT vs DoE, p-values and Bayesian statistics and Power vs Assurance as easy opportunities to improve robustness of decisions.

PSI Webinar: Using visualisation to help make decisions

This webinar will feature presentations from 3 speakers on the topic of Using Visualisations to Help Make Decisions.

Introduction To Industry Training Course 2020

The ITIT course will take 25 delegates new to the industry on a complete drug development experience from discovery to marketing. They will visit 6 companies from October 2020 to July 2021 to learn about 6 topics from experts in their field. The ITIT course will have 3 sessions in continental Europe and 3 - 4 sessions in the UK. It promises to be a truly memorable course.

PSI Webinar: Patient preference studies

In this webinar you will hear an introduction to what a patient preference study is as well as an overview of where this type of study can inform regulatory decision making. This will be followed by 2 examples looking at potential approaches to eliciting patient preference.

A PSI Training Course - R for SAS Users

This course is aimed at Statisticians and Programmers experienced in SAS, but little or no experience with R. An Introduction to R studio and the R language, statistical graphics, programming statistical models, simulations and more…

PSI Toxicology SIG Workshop

PSI Toxicology SIG workshop – 24th and 25th November 2020 The Toxicology SIG provides a forum for statisticians working in regulatory/investigative toxicology, as well as most other pre-clinical areas, to discuss issues and interact with one another. This 1.5-day workshop will involve approximately 20 statisticians, focusing on discussions around “best practice” in the statistical analysis of various data types. The afternoon of Day 1 will include a 4.5 hour Bayesian training course focused towards applications in toxicology/pre-clinical, provided by Prof. Dr. Katja Ickstadt and is included in the workshop fee. The cost will be £270 including VAT per delegate, inclusive of food and one night’s accommodation (and the training course). The workshop is being held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Heathrow. The agenda and topics that will be discussed are yet to be finalised, but please get in touch with gareth.thomas@covance.com if you have suggestions. Full details will be circulated in the coming weeks.

Latest Jobs

Clinical Statistics - Statistician/Principal Statistician

GSK has a thriving global community of Oncology statisticians supporting our commitment to the development of new oncology therapies with the life-changing potential of helping patients with cancer. Click to learn about our exciting career opportunities.

Clinical Statistics Leader

GSK has a thriving global community of Oncology statisticians supporting our commitment to the development of new oncology therapies with the life-changing potential of helping patients with cancer. Click to learn about our exciting career opportunities.

Expert in Clinical Trial Methodology

Biometrics at AstraZeneca provides the data that influences decisions on how we roll back the frontiers of science to bring life-changing medicines to the world. We are at the heart of design, analytics and interpretation of AstraZeneca’s portfolio.

Head - Medical Market Access Statistics

GSK has a thriving global community of Oncology statisticians supporting our commitment to the development of new oncology therapies with the life-changing potential of helping patients with cancer. Click to learn about our exciting career opportunities.

Manager Biostatistics

We offer an interesting, diversified and challenging position, good contractual conditions, flexible working models, all the social benefits of a modern company and a professional environment where you will have the opportunity for personal growth.

Senior Manager Biostatistics

We offer an interesting, diversified and challenging position, good contractual conditions, flexible working models, all the social benefits of a modern company and a professional environment where you will have the opportunity for personal growth.

Senior/Lead Biostatistician

Wish you were here? Recognised recently as a Top CRO by Life Science Leader, Premier Research is a medium sized, full service, global CRO with circa 1,500 employees worldwide, perfectly positioned to be big enough to help, yet small enough to care.

Senior/Principal Biostatistician

We currently have vacancies in our Early Phase and Late Phase Teams, for either home or office based positions across EMEA, so please reach out for more information.

Statisticians - All Levels

Why not come and work for a company recognised as one of the UK's Top 25 Best Big Companies to Work For. The continued growth of our pipeline means we have opportunities for exceptional statisticians at all levels to join our Biostatistics group.