Happy Christmas! This episode is the last one in 2018 and we will distil the best of the last 40 episodes for you in this Christmas edition of the podcast.

It has been anamazing journey and we will talk about the challenges and the learnings as well as the achievements of the podcast itself. Thus, you’ll get a behind the scenes look into the podcasting work.

KOLs play a major role in the health sector and professionally working together with them will boost your career! This episode provides you with lots of insights and tips.

In this episode, we talk
• about how the interactions between pharma companies and KOLs look like
• which rules are important and how you as a statistician should comply with these
• about practical tips of building relationships with KOLs
• about opportunities to work with KOLs
• and about mindset topics in engaging withKOLs

If you ask someone within the pharma world of statisticians on what is the hottest topic, you most likely will just get: Estimands!

Many scientific events, conference sessions, publications and presentations are organized around this topic. Thus, I'm super happy, that we have Mouna and Chrissie on the podcast as they have presented about this topic at various occasions.

In this episode, you will learn about

- the importance of the concept itself and it’s implications
- the terminology of the estimand framework
- and how it relates to missing data terminology

Have you ever been proposing or defending a project in a larger meeting - maybe even with senior management - and it didn't go as smoothly as you would like?

Or do you prepare yourself for such a meeting and you feel unsure about what to expect?

Then this episode will help you!

Same procedure every year - the year end review as part of the performance management appears on your calendar. Are you worried about filling in forms? Do you feel like this is not adding value?

In this episode, we give you practical tips how to master the review like a pro.

We're launching a new leadership course next year and in this episode, we go into some key questions about statisticians and leadership.

Today, regulatory approval doesn't ensure anymore, that patients benefit from new therapies. As statisticians, we also need to ensure access and reimbursement for new treatments in the different markets around the world.

The process to gain this access and reimbursement in Germany comes with very specific challenges. Yet, due to the large impact of Germany on other countries via the complex reference pricing system and the size of the population of Germany, we must understand these topics.

Andreas Schwenke gathered experiences across therapeutic areas with many companies since the start of the new process in Germany. This makes him the most experienced and best connected statistician in the world for this topic.

We're all making decisions to optimize our studies. Optimizing project plans across different studies presents further challenges. But how to increase the overall portfolio of a company given its limitations leads yet another set of challenges. Knowing how decisions are taken at this top level helps to understand the bigger picture and why this sometimes implies sub-optimal decisions on a study or compound level.

Another big learning from these complex interactions are the influencing skills needed to work with senior and diverse teams.

Only a few statisticians in the industry work in these areas and Andreas Sashegyi is of these.

You have probably heard about Simon Sinek and his golden circle. If not, have a look at his great TED talk.

In this episode we explain via a nice story with BA, what the impact of starting with why can be. We also cover how you can more effectively work together with CROs and Programmers as well as new team members.

Becoming a supervisor changes things dramatically at work for you. It did for me and Simon helped me by openly providing deep insights into his years of a supervisor - especially his failures and dramtic moments.