Video-on-Demand Launch
You will be pleased to hear that the video-on-demand platform has been built, and is undergoing final testing. A significant amount of material has already been loaded, and access will be totally free for members, as promised. We plan to launch this at the PSI Conference. If you are attending, please visit us at the PSI Stand to receive a demonstration of the new tool. If not, further details will be communicated in June.
Conference
On writing this piece we already have 340 delegates registered for this year’s conference in Amsterdam (3-6 June). I would like to congratulate Lucy Rowell (Conference Chair) and the Scientific Committee for putting an excellent scientific programme together, and for their fantastic promotion of this event.
Meeting with RSS (Royal Statistical Society)
The recent merger debate demonstrated that PSI and RSS has many common objectives, and there are areas we can work together. I therefore wish to strengthen our ties with RSS, whilst maintaining our independence. Rebecca Sudlow (External Affairs Director), Ray Harris (Vice-Chair and Publications Director) and I therefore met with Hetan Shah (RSS, Executive Director) and Nicola Emmerson (RSS, Director of Membership and Professional Affairs) in April. We had an excellent meeting and discussed a number of items. In particular, it was very interesting to hear about their learnings on data science. We also discussed working together on school engagement in the promotion of statistics. RSS are in the process of relaunching their Chartered status process, and they will be attending the PSI Conference to discuss this with their members. Moving forward we plan to meet with them every six months.
Communication Initiative
As part of the communication initiative we are looking at new ways of reaching our members. We are using LinkedIn and our news section of the website more frequently. In addition, we are supporting Alexander Schacht (Lilly, Germany) with ‘The Effective Statistician’. This contains a series of podcasts on statistical and work related topics. I was interviewed recently on the how to get the most from your PSI membership. A number of podcasts have already been produced. Visit http://theeffectivestatistician.com/ for more details.
Special Interest Groups
You may not be aware that PSI has formed 11 Special Interest Groups (SIGs), and we run these jointly with EFSPI. Our SIGs are a forum for members to discuss topics of mutual interest, keep updated on developments in a particular area of industry, organise events on their specialist field and/or collaborate on developing the science of that field. These include areas such as Benefit Risk, Health Technology Assessments (HTA), Toxicology and Modelling & Simulation etc. I am keen to give these more exposure, and Adam Crisp (GSK) is currently working on how we can give them more prominence on our website. You can currently find details on the SIGs on our website (https://www.psiweb.org/) under “About Us”.
In addition, we are looking into relaunching our New Starters SIG. More information will follow on this in the coming months.
Regulatory Committee
The Regulatory Committee is jointly run with EFSPI. Our Regulatory Director is Anna Berglind (AstraZeneca, Sweden), and she is joined on the committee by many PSI members. Together the committee provides comments and recommendations to Regulatory Agencies (such as FDA and EMA) on Draft Regulatory Guidelines. They provide an important service on behalf of our membership and the profession as a whole. In future, we plan to publish our comments on our website. I want you all to see some of the great things our volunteers are doing on your behalf.
Membership Secretary
Last year we introduced a Membership Secretary to provide more focus on this important area. Tim Rolfe (GSK) was assigned as the first Membership Secretary. The strategy is already paying off and we have seen a 13% increase in renewals. Thank you to Tim and MCI for their work on this.
Annual General Meeting and Voting
Please note, voting information has been sent to all members. I urge you to use your vote, especially as you have a choice for the next chair (Naomi Givens or Lucy Rowell). The majority of you will now be full members with full voting rights. If you have not received a note from the Electoral Reform Services please contact MCI (psi@mci-group.com).
That is all.
Thank you
Nigel
