As we prepare to close the door on 2020, we asked Pantelis Vlachos, Principal/Strategic Consultant for Cytel, to share his favorite Cytel events of this year. Continue reading this blog for a summary of Cytel’s 2020 contributions around adaptive designs and Bayesian methods.
2020 was a challenging year for all of us. It changed the way we delivered demos, trainings and seminars on our software products and research methods. The most memorable such events from the year were the following:
Webinar: Designing Event-based Studies
Many organizations find it difficult to design event-based studies such as cardiovascular or oncology trials. Understanding how many patients will be needed and how long the trial will take requires advanced statistical approaches. Such complexities make it more difficult or time consuming to optimize the operating characteristics and ensure the trial will meet your organization’s objectives. Cytel conducted a webinar presented by Pantelis Vlachos on methodologies to overcome these challenges.
Complex Innovative Trial Design Series
Cytel’s successful roadshows held in London and Copenhagen in February 2020, covered Bayesian design methods, real world evidence and software for trial design. Our software experts provided demos of EnForeSys, Cytel's user-friendly decision tool for forecasting patient enrollment. The symposium also included dedicated East® training sessions for the attending members.
East® Orientation Webinar Series
The outbreak of the COVID-19 Pandemic resulted in all the physical events getting cancelled. Cytel quickly adapted and offered a series of complementary webinars on East Modules - DE, MAMS, SURVADAPT, MCPMod and ENRICH. Access the webinar replays on our website here.
East Alloy: Verified Innovation for Complex Methods
Keeping up with the rapid pace of clinical development means that we need to adopt the innovative or computationally intensive designs like Bayesian methods. Yet, cutting edge technology can sometimes be difficult to assess or can introduce risk. East Alloy™ is a web-based extension of East for clinical trial design that blends the pace of SaaS delivery, the ease of use and robustness of Cytel software, and the velocity of cloud-based computing.
Gain some behind-the-scenes insights into the development of this new module and understand how your company can leverage East Alloy to conduct computationally intensive designs with ease, confidence, and speed.
The Informative Bayesian
Bayesian methods are of growing interest to the drug development industry, as they allow clinical investigators to leverage historical trial data as well as learnings from new data as it accrues throughout a trial. The result is better-informed decision making, greater program flexibility, and the ability to run smaller, more resource-efficient trials.
This year we brought you a new blog series “The Informative Bayesian” that offers insights on technology and Bayesian decision-making. Read the series and subscribe to Cytel blogs for regular updates.
Virtual Symposium: Innovations in Bayesian Trials
Cytel and Novartis are conducting a complimentary Bayesian Virtual Symposium and Interactive Workshop. This dynamic program covers a range of topics presented by Bayesian experts in academia, regulatory and industry. The presentations include adaptive design, platform studies, complex innovative designs using Bayesian modeling, regulatory acceptability of Bayesian designs and leveraging external information using Bayesian priors. Get access to the on-demand webinars and register for the upcoming presentations.
About Pantelis Vlachos
Pantelis is Principal/Strategic Consultant for Cytel, Inc. based in Geneva. He joined the company in January 2013. Before that, he was a Principal Biostatistician at Merck Serono as well as a Professor of Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University for 12 years. His research interests lie in the area of adaptive designs, mainly from a Bayesian perspective, as well as hierarchical model testing and checking although his secret passion is Text Mining. He has served as Managing Editor of the journal “Bayesian Analysis” as well as editorial boards of several other journals and online statistical data and software archives.
