Cytel Blog

In this blog, Paul Fardy, Executive Director of Data Management at Cytel shares his thoughts on how the data manager role has evolved. 

To mark the occasion of our 30th anniversary, in late 2017 we conducted a brief survey to gain a snapshot of what professionals in data management, statistical programming, and biostatistics feel are the key challenges facing their functions, the top areas for skills development, and the clinical data areas they believe are likely to have the greatest impact on drug development.

We are now able to share our findings- read on for some highlights, and to download your complimentary copy of the report.

Statistical programmers at all levels can make a significant impact on streamlining delivery, improving efficiency, and importantly ensuring quality.  At a recent PhUSE Single Day event , Cytel's Sunil Gupta gave a very well received presentation on how best to achieve high quality deliverables while maintaining efficiency, noting that 3 key components should be observed:

Outsourcing solutions should never be a one size fits all process, and smaller and emerging biopharma companies may  have different priorities and processes when working with external vendors to larger pharmaceutical organizations.

CDISC is a global, nonprofit charitable organization whose mission is ‘to inform patient care and safety through higher quality medical research’.  The organization delivers this mission through the development of data standards designed to streamline clinical research- these standard formats are increasingly expected for use in data submissions by regulatory authorities. Importantly, data standardization also brings significant benefits to the industry- in the CDISC 2014 Business Case (1),  it is noted that:

 “For those developing regulatory eSubmissions, using updated baseline numbers for the time and cost of getting a drug to market, it can be found that ~ $180M can be saved per submission (18% of the total cost). An average of two years can be saved off of an average 12-year clinical development program lifecycle – just by standardizing data”.

It’s therefore critical that the biopharma and CRO industries develop the next generation of data managers, statisticians and programmers with strong knowledge of the CDISC standards.

Angelo Tinazzi has more than 20 years’ experience in data-management and statistical programming and is Director of Clinical Data Standards and Data Submission at Cytel.  He has been a member of the European CDISC Committee since 2015 and is a member of the CDISC ADaM team. Taking the next step in his journey as a data standards expert, Angelo is now a "candidate trainer" with CDISC –working towards becoming an “Authorized CDISC Instructor”.  In this blog we find out more from Angelo about his experiences and the role of the CDISC trainer.

The Joint Statistical Meetings is the largest and arguably most highly respected gathering of statisticians in the world.  It will bring together over 6000 statisticians for this year’s event in Chicago.   As a large meeting, it can be a challenge to navigate and find the sessions which are going to be most valuable for your work.  To help out, we've asked some of the leading lights of our statistical group which sessions are their top picks this year. 

Once upon a time Hansel and Gretel laid a trail of breadcrumbs which they followed to find their way back home.  Their story can be an allegory for the concept of traceability in clinical data where we need to  lay a clear path to ensure that the results we have created can be reproduced. This blog looks at some aspects of a presentation Lost in Traceability  by Angelo Tinazzi at the CDISC EU Interchange. 

Last week was the CDISC EU Interchange conference in Vienna, a key event on the calendar for Cytel’s statistical programming subject matter experts . Angelo Tinazzi, Director, Statistical Programming, Clinical Data Standards and Clinical Data Submission at Cytel co-chaired the sessions on Foundational Standards and Standards Governance alongside Astrazeneca’s Daniel Graham, and delivered a presentation on Traceability within the Foundational standards track.

In this blog, Angelo highlights some of the hot topics which emerged from the presentations he attended during the meeting. 

In this blog we’ll highlight some unique challenges that are encountered from a Data Management perspective when working on early phase Oncology trials. We’ll also discuss approaches which can be employed to mitigate these issues.