ACoP13 Will Be Live!

Welcome to ACoP

 

Integrating Standardization and Innovation in Your Organization:  Find a Workflow That Works for You!

Preconference chairs: Jace Nielsen, Chris Penland, Mike K. Smith, Stacey Tannenbaum

We all want to have time to innovate, be creative, do great science and influence decision making as part of the “day-to-day” activities of our day jobs. But there are only so many hours in the day, and nobody ever got a manuscript published on how tidy and reproducible their workflow was… Are we spending our creative energy in the right places when we write code to produce yet another basic model diagnostic plot? And in doing so, are we robbing our colleagues of time to innovate and be creative because they need to check yet another non-standard chunk of code?

Industrialization (standardization, automation, process, and infrastructure) of PMX activities is critical for efficiency, quality, effectiveness, and impact, and is a topic that every pharmacometrics group struggles with. Despite similar needs and goals, each organization addresses these issues independently, duplicating effort, and potentially creating contradictory standards that don't align! This costs us valuable time for innovation.. we can do better! Let’s put creativity where it counts!

Pharmacometricians of all levels from diverse organizations (industry, CROs, academic and regulatory groups) are invited together to collaborate, and to share learnings, needs, challenges, and ideas.  The preconference will be a jumping off point for further discussions and development of best practices and standards that can be applied across the PMX community.  

The event will be composed of thought-provoking didactic presentations interwoven throughout the day with individual and facilitated group exercises exploring challenging scenarios. This will be very interactive, so come ready to contribute!  Attendees may also be asked to complete a survey and review preparatory materials prior to the preconference date.

Registration for the pre-conference closes August 31, 2021 to allow ample time for group assignment and preparatory work. Discussion groups will be pre-assigned to ensure diverse composition. For organizations sending multiple delegates, please consult within and consider that space is limited and diverse representation is desired. We encourage you to plan to stay for the whole day!

Topics covered include:

What is a “workflow”?

  • Why is it necessary, important, and useful?
  • To-MAY-to / to-MAH-to: terminology 101

What’s the worst that could happen?

  • What are the dangers of not having a workflow?
  • What are the scenarios that reveal weak points in your workflows?
  • How do I know what I am missing? Identifying blindspots in your workflow.

Making design choices in your workflow 

  • What’s in the toolbox? Environments, software, scripts already available in PMX
  • “Opinionated” tools: is that a bad thing?
  • Choices, choices, choices: conscious vs. unconscious, implicit vs. explicit 
  • Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should: Standardization and/or automation
  • Basic hygiene: naming conventions, file structures, data standards, etc.

Keynote: What are the technical, strategic, organizational, and cultural forces impacting acceptance and adoption of standardization and automation? 

Why should you attend the pre-conference?

  • Understand the concepts and terminology and what can and cannot be industrialized
  • Appreciate the benefits of a PMX workflow
  • Recognize the difficulties of implementing a PMX workflow in your organization 
  • Learn what other PMX groups do well, recognize what YOUR group does well, and identify where you, your group, and the community can improve
  • What does the working PMXn want and need, what are the roadblocks?
  • Brainstorm and share your ideas, tips, successes, and lessons learnt
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