Event

One-day PSI/PHUSE Event: Change Management for Moving to R/Open-Source

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Date: Thursday 3rd July 2025
Time: 09:30 - 17:30 BST
Location: AstraZeneca Discovery Centre, Biomedical Campus, 1 Francis Crick Ave, Trumpington, Cambridge CB2 0AA, United Kingdom

Who is this event intended for?: Anyone interested in the practicalities of moving to R/open-source (covering all levels and types of statistician/programmer)

What is the benefit of attending?: 

  • To hear how a wide range of companies have approached moving to R/Open source.
  • To focus on and discuss all of the particular topics of change management in this space.
  • To be sent away well equipped to have the conversations about change management within your particular context.

Overview

This one-day event focuses on the comprehensive management of transitioning to R/Open-Source, addressing the challenges and providing actionable insights. Attendees will participate in sessions covering essential topics such as training best practices, creating strategic plans, making the case to senior management, and managing both statistical and programming aspects of the transition. The day includes presentations from industry leaders, interactive discussions (including a panel discussion), and networking opportunities, aimed at equipping decision-makers, leaders, statisticians, and programmers with the tools needed to navigate and implement this significant change effectively.

Transitioning to R/Open-Source represents a large, complex, and potentially chaotic change, often characterized by fear, uncertainty, and doubt. There are often numerous discussions around specifics (R validation, Shiny applications, and regulatory submission) or larger pharma companies talking about their specific move to R, but not much in the way of focusing on each of the particular topics of change management in this space and applying this to different sizes and types of companies so all can fully benefit.

Dive into this one-day event with comprehensive sessions covering essential topics such as:

  • Best way to train
  • Creating a vision and plans
  • Making the case to senior management
  • How to address statistical aspects (Equivalency of methods, availability of functionality, comparability, Stat Analysis Plans, QC)
  • Programming specific aspects (Environment, existing code base, validation)
  • Find your change agents
  • Dealing with strong feelings during a significant change (fast pace, fear, overexcitement, instability)

Whether you’re a decision-maker, leader, methodological statistician, or keen programmer, this event is designed to equip you with the knowledge and tools needed to approach this transition. Come and be part of an interactive day, share experiences, and hear from other companies about how they are managing the change. Go home knowing how to approach this change and how to initiate conversations with colleagues and management. Register now to secure your spot and take steps towards embracing open-source solutions confidently!

Cost

This in-person event is free to both Members of PSI and Non-Members and includes lunch and refreshments.

Registration

To register for this event, please click here.

Speaker details

Speaker

Biography

Abstract Title


MikeSmith
Mike Smith, Pfizer

  

Mike K Smith is a senior director and lead of the R Centre of Excellence at Pfizer where he has worked for 32 years. Like many other pharma companies, Pfizer is making the transition towards using R as the backbone of clinical trial reporting, but they have been using R in various areas for about 20 years. In Mike’s role as a subject matter expert and champion for R over this time, he has had a lead role in defining validation, training, building community and supporting colleagues – approximately 1300 Pfizer staff are on the “R in Pfizer” Teams channel. He is also a veteran of supporting colleagues through roll out of new tools and systems so has first-hand experience of leading business input to change management.

 Introducing Change Management 
AndyNicholls
Andy Nicholls, GSK

 

Andy Nicholls is a Senior Director and Head of GSK’s Data Science Innovation and Engineering team where he is responsible for setting and delivering Biostatistics’ open-source strategy and R adoption objective. Over the past 8 years at GSK, Andy and his team have led a global R training program, delivered GSK’s first dedicated platform for R, and built a new wave of tooling to support new programming delivery concepts such as Analysis Results Data.  

From Training to Practice: A shift to Just in Time User Support
MB Headshot
Martin Brown, PPD

 

Martin Brown is an Associate Director in PPD’s Statistical Science group having joined PPD in 2007. In this role he consults on various areas, including complex statistical methods, simulations, and statistical software, and is leading the transition towards using R. He received his MSc. in Statistics from the University of Sheffield and is a Chartered Statistician with the RSS. Martin is also the chair of the PSI AIMS special interest group, which aims to support statisticians in moving to open source.

Change management in a large CRO; investing for the future

 

 

Stuart Malcolm, Veramed

 Planning on R? Risks, Resources and Realism

yannickvandendijck
Yannick Vandendijck, Johnson & Johnson

  

Yannick Vandendijck is a biostatistician at Johnson & Johnson since 2018. He obtained his PhD at Hasselt University (Belgium) in 2015. Within Johnson & Johnson, Yannick has worked mainly on early development studies in oncology, global public health, and infectious diseases and vaccines. Yannick contributed to and led multiple R initiatives within the Johnson & Johnson Statistics and Decision Sciences organisation, such as initiatives around the use of ggplot, machine learning in R, multiple R introduction trainings, teal and efficacy analysis implementations in R. Yannick is an active contributor in the cross-pharma PHUSE DVOST CAMIS (Comparing Analysis Method Implementations in Software) working group. Further, Yannick is a guest professor at Hasselt University (Belgium).

 SAIL.R – R in Biometrics - AstraZeneca approach to enable R Shiny apps for Drug Project activities

Ruhul Amin, AstraZeneca

 R in Biometrics - AstraZeneca approach to enable R Shiny apps for Drug Project activities

Kieran Martin, Roche

 

Getting Ready for submission with R

 

 

ColinGillespie
Colin Gillespie, Jumping Rivers

Colin has been using R since 1999. He is the CTO of Jumping Rivers and a Senior Statistics Lecturer at Newcastle University. 

Over the years, he’s written several R packages and published the book Efficient R Programming with O’Reilly.

 Is a single R repository enough?

SebastiaBarcelo
Sebastià Barceló, Cytel

Sebastià Barceló, Spanish (Mallorca), Associate Director of Statistical Programming with more than 10 years of experience. He was involved in macro development and automation related tasks since the beginning of his career and he is now working in Geneva within Cytel’s biometrics service department, leading a group of developers in charge of several automation initiatives, application development and driving Cytel’s transition to Open Source.

 Navigating Change in a CRO – What I Wish I Knew 5 Years Ago About Transitioning to R

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