European Statistical Forum

Medical and pharmaceutical statistics have become a highly specialized field with technically advanced methods for exposure and response modeling, dose-finding, adaptive study designs, etc. However, teams sometimes struggle with issues and phenomena that appear much more basic but have a massive impact in practice.

Do we see patterns in data where there are none? Can we distinguish association from causation? How reproducible are subgroup findings, or scientific results in general?

The resolution of these and similar issues is often difficult in interdisciplinary settings, as it requires a blend of statistical, common-sense, and communicative skills.
It is however of vital importance that the results generated from the analyses of the clinical study data is properly understood and interpreted because wrong conclusions can result in a waste of time, effort, increase of costs and can compromise the safety and well-being of patients.

The European Statistical Forum (ESForum) shall include presentations focusing on various aspects of statistical reasoning:

• Reproducibility
• Hidden bias
• Multiplicity (endpoint selection, subgroups, etc.)
• Choice of scales and effect measures
• Prediction, attribution, estimation
• Association vs. causation
• Statistical significance vs. clinical relevance
• Pattern detection
• The interpretation of inferential statistics both in the frequentist as well as in the Bayesian framework.

Methodological approaches to the above issues as well as case studies and practical experiences will be presented.

Scientific Board
Jens-Otto Andreas - SSI Business Operational Excellence Senior Lead at UCB Biosciences GmbH
Lisa Comarella - Director Biostatistics at Alira Health Biometrics
Giacomo Mordenti - Head of Biostatistics & Data Management Europe at Daiichi Sankyo Europe GmbH
Marc Vandemeulebroecke - Global Group Head for Dermatology at Novartis Biostatistics

Who should attend?
This statistical conference is addressed to statisticians, pharmacometricians, regulatory affairs specialists, academia and other experts interested in the field belonging to: Pharmaceutical, and Biotechnology companies, CROs, Universities/Hospitals, Academic Research.