In this episode of The Effective Statistician, Alun Bedding takes the mic to explore one of the most underrated yet transformative tools in any professional's career—networking.
With the PSI Conference happening, this episode offers timely insights into how statisticians—introverts and extroverts alike—can use networking to build meaningful professional relationships, accelerate their careers, and find support within the broader community.
Alun shares personal anecdotes, including how a casual conversation with Alexander at a past PSI event led to his current guest host role, and outlines a step-by-step mindset and strategy for networking with authenticity and purpose.
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16:32
Inclusion for All: Rethinking Success, Neurodiversity, and Accessibility in the Workplace
In this episode, Alun Bedding welcomes Emma Crawford for a powerful and personal conversation about building inclusive workplace cultures—ones where every individual can thrive. Emma shares her late diagnosis of autism and how it reshaped her experience and expectations of the workplace. Together, they explore the limitations of the traditional “reasonable adjustments” framework and introduce the concept of success enablers—workplace strategies and tools that benefit not just neurodivergent individuals but everyone on the team.
The conversation dives deep into the role of leadership, AI tools, flexible work arrangements, and cultural shifts that prioritize accessibility and well-being for all employees.
Emma also previews her interactive workshop at the upcoming PSI conference and gives insight into how the session will encourage open discussion, hands-on activities, and actionable takeaways to help leaders and teams foster a more inclusive environment.
Whether you’re a people leader, statistician, or advocate for change—this episode will challenge your assumptions and inspire more inclusive practices.
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36:46
Daily updated systematic literature reviews - the future of oncology
How can oncologists and healthcare professionals keep up with the ever-growing body of research to make the best decisions for patients?
In this episode, I speak with Anna Forsythe, a pharmacologist, health economist, and founder of OncoScope, a groundbreaking platform delivering daily updated systematic literature reviews (SLRs) in oncology. Drawing on decades of experience in pharma and health economics, Anna shares how automation and AI are transforming the traditionally tedious SLR process—making up-to-date evidence accessible to clinicians in just a few clicks.
Anna’s vision is clear: democratize access to high-quality, current evidence for clinicians—and ultimately improve patient care.
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22:57
A novel approach for finding predictive biomarkers
In this episode, I’m joined by Julia Geronimi from Servier and Dr. Pavel Mozgunov from the University of Cambridge to explore a topic that’s absolutely central to advancing precision medicine—predictive biomarkers.
We dive into the challenges of identifying predictive vs. prognostic biomarkers, especially in early-phase clinical trials with limited sample sizes. What makes their approach so exciting is that it offers a model-flexible, visually intuitive way to detect predictiveness—even before we talk about dichotomizing biomarkers or setting cutoffs.
If you work on clinical trial design, translational science, or biomarker development, this conversation will give you fresh tools—and a lot to think about.
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35:39
A Webinar Recording: Redefining the Role of Statisticians in a World of Real-World Data and AI
In this special episode, I’m sharing the recording of a webinar I co-hosted with Cytel on March 20, 2025. I was joined by an expert panel of leaders in statistics and clinical development: Yannis Jemiai, Flaminia Chiesa, and Benjamin Piske. Together, we explored how the role of statisticians is rapidly evolving in response to industry changes, data innovations, and AI-driven transformation.
This rich discussion dives into what it means to lead as a Clinical Data Scientist today—and why statisticians are uniquely positioned to influence strategy, innovation, and decision-making across the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors.
À propos de The Effective Statistician - in association with PSI
The podcast from statisticians for statisticians to have a bigger impact at work. This podcast is set up in association with PSI - Promoting Statistical Insight. This podcast helps you to grow your leadership skills, learn about ongoing discussions in the scientific community, build you knowledge about the health sector and be more efficient at work. This podcast helps statisticians at all levels with and without management experience. It is targeted towards the health, but lots of topics will be important for the wider data scientists community.