Conference 2018
The conference in Amsterdam was a tremendous success. We had a record attendance of 391 delegates, which was greater than Berlin, 2016. The feedback from the delegates on the scientific content, venue, food and entertainment was excellent. Due to the increase in delegate numbers over recent years we decided to move to exhibition/conference arena this year, and it really paid off. The conference was held in Amsterdam’s historic old stock exchange, and was extremely professional.
I would like to thank Lucy Rowell (Roche), the Scientific Committee and MCI for delivering a first class conference. For those of you who missed it, we have loaded more than 50 videos (presentations) from the conference to the Video-on-Demand Platform. These videos are available for free for all members. Please take a look:
https://www.psiweb.org/video-library/search
Idea from the AGM
During the AGM, Nelson Kinnersley (Roche) suggested we heavily subsidize conference registration for university students and PhD students. The board loved this idea, and we are currently putting a proposal together. Thank you Nelson. J
Video-on-Demand (VoD) Launch
The VoD Launch was launched with great interest at the PSI Conference. More than 100 videos (presentations) have now been loaded. This resource will continue to evolve in the coming years. We plan to include all Journal Clubs and Webinars, and many historical ones have already been loaded. In addition, a selection of Training Courses and Scientific Meetings will be included each year.
Thank you to Mary Elliot-Davey (Amgen), Ingrid Franklin (Veramed), MCI and the training committee for delivering this important resource for PSI.
Strategy Meeting
The board and I are currently preparing for this year’s strategy day meeting in October. The purpose of this meeting is to set our objectives for the next two years (2019-2020). We wish to devise a strategy to increase our membership further, particularly in building on our success in Continental Europe. We also plan to determine our strategy regarding Data Science, which is a hot topic at present. Members of the operational committees will join the directors at the event, and we look forward to receiving their feedback and help in planning for the future.
Finances
PSI Finances are very healthy at present. We made a surplus (profit) of £71k in 2017, and are forecasting a very good surplus in 2018. This will enable us to continue to invest back into the society.
Elections and Board Update
Lucy Rowell (Roche) was elected as the next chair of PSI. Lucy will act as the Vice-Chair in her first year, and will take over from me as Chair in June/July 2019. Lucy and Naomi Givens (GSK) put forward excellent manifestoes, and I would like to thank them both for putting themselves forward and for running two excellent campaigns.
Kate Taylor (Amgen) has been elected as the new Conference Chair. Alexander Schacht (Eli Lilly, Germany) was also elected to the Board and will be the new Publications and Communications Director. We have decided to increase the remit of Publications to include Communications.
Rebecca Sudlow (Roche) has decided to step down as the External Affair Director, and will be replaced by Ray Harris. Ray will be co-opted for two years. I would like to thank Rebecca for her contribution, engagement and positivity over the past two years.
PSI Awards
I would like to congratulate Amanda Darekar (Pfizer) and Ingrid Franklin (Veramed) who both received Mick Godley awards. Amanda has been a key contributor to the Careers and Academic Liaison Committee (CALC) for 10 years and has supported a huge number of school workshops, career fairs, university talks, and Big Bang events. Ingrid was recognized for being a co-developer of Video on Demand Platform. Its development was on one of PSI’s primary objectives.
We also had a joint winner of the PSI and RSS Prize. This is awarded each year for the most influential example of the application of an existing statistical practice, or the implementation of an innovative statistical practice, in the pharmaceutical industry. The winners were:
Dr Mouna Akacha (Novartis) for “Enhancing drug development using clinically interpretable treatment effect measures (‘estimands‘) that allow for efficient statistical analyses”, and
Dr Simon Bate (GSK) for “Improving the quality and reliability of animal research through the use of InVivoStat”
Special Interest Groups (SIGs)
We have been working to increase the exposure and profiles of our SIGs. With this in mind, Adam Crisp (GSK) has improved the placement and landing page on the Website:
https://www.psiweb.org/sigs-special-interest-groups/sigs
The content will also be updated in the coming months.
Call for Volunteers
If you are interested in becoming a volunteer and joining one of our committees, please send an email to psi@mci-group.com. We will have a few opening shortly.
That is all.
Thank you
Nigel
