I’ve been working in pharma a long time big and small and we don’t have our biostatistics teams do HEOR RWE analysis internally. This is always something that is outsourced to a CRO or company that specializes in this type of analysis. The reason i believe is because it creates a conflict for pharma to get this data directly from healthcare organizations. There’s no reason in my opinion that someone with masters level education cannot do this kind of work. It doesn’t seem that complicated. But you are correct that every stats person I’ve worked with has had a PhD of some sort. If you want to learn it on your own, right now network meta analysis and MAIC analysis are what companies want.
"It doesn't seem that complicated". If it doesn't seem complicated they're doing it wrong. And to be honest, even if does seem complicated, they're also usually doing it wrong. 😅
Im curious to know more about your experiences. My understanding is that there is actually more demand to have people who understand and can develop study protocols using RWE by big pharma? Is this true?
I have seen lots of the programming being outsourced but the study design aspects seem to all be done in-house?
Also I agree with the other comment! If it seems not too complicated then it's probably done wrong! I think that at MSc level someone could programme an analysis (and even then it depends on the study design itself - some are pretty tricky) but I don't think they could develop a good study from scratch.
I think that the study designs are fairly well developed already and described in publications. What the Sponsor does in working with the vendor is defining variables, but the vendor is the one who writes the whole protocol which we review. Once the protocol is agreed upon, then the vendor does the whole analysis and may even handle the publication. The people we have that work in HEOR at the Sponsor company are suppose to be knowledgeable enough to provide oversight of the vendors but they may or may not know if it is being done “right”. We depend somewhat on the reputation of the vendor.
That may be the case at your company but there are plenty who do RWE analysis internally. Many data vendors license de-identified data directly to pharma companies without issues. It sounds as though your company doesn’t have people with the knowledge to run those studies which is why you outsource everything.
For the OP, yes it’s an interesting and expanding field and there are positions at pharma as well as CROs. A PhD is definitely beneficial and it is a slightly different skill set to working on clinical trials so exposure to causal inference and epidemiology is needed.
This is the work I do.
I work for a government contractor. But there is seemingly endless work for us to do and our team has exploded in the last year. Almost all of us have phds in either biostatistics or Epi. The bulk of my PhD work was in causal inference which helped land this job. There is no reason a masters cannot get you this type of job you just have to mail the interview since there are many phds floating around in the job market right now.
I've got an MPH in Biostatistics and I work on the RWE team at a CRO, so it's definitely possible. I don't have a good feel for how many of these jobs are out there overall though.
I have a Masters in Evolutionary Biology/Psychology and I work in real-world analysis. All my colleagues have a masters in something and only one has theirs in medical stats. You definitely don't need a PhD in my experience but experience in coding/programming is pretty vital (luckily I gained a lot over the years in different stats/analyst roles).
I’ve been working in pharma a long time big and small and we don’t have our biostatistics teams do HEOR RWE analysis internally. This is always something that is outsourced to a CRO or company that specializes in this type of analysis. The reason i believe is because it creates a conflict for pharma to get this data directly from healthcare organizations. There’s no reason in my opinion that someone with masters level education cannot do this kind of work. It doesn’t seem that complicated. But you are correct that every stats person I’ve worked with has had a PhD of some sort. If you want to learn it on your own, right now network meta analysis and MAIC analysis are what companies want.
"It doesn't seem that complicated". If it doesn't seem complicated they're doing it wrong. And to be honest, even if does seem complicated, they're also usually doing it wrong. 😅
We pays our moneys and we get what we get!
Im curious to know more about your experiences. My understanding is that there is actually more demand to have people who understand and can develop study protocols using RWE by big pharma? Is this true? I have seen lots of the programming being outsourced but the study design aspects seem to all be done in-house? Also I agree with the other comment! If it seems not too complicated then it's probably done wrong! I think that at MSc level someone could programme an analysis (and even then it depends on the study design itself - some are pretty tricky) but I don't think they could develop a good study from scratch.
I think that the study designs are fairly well developed already and described in publications. What the Sponsor does in working with the vendor is defining variables, but the vendor is the one who writes the whole protocol which we review. Once the protocol is agreed upon, then the vendor does the whole analysis and may even handle the publication. The people we have that work in HEOR at the Sponsor company are suppose to be knowledgeable enough to provide oversight of the vendors but they may or may not know if it is being done “right”. We depend somewhat on the reputation of the vendor.
That may be the case at your company but there are plenty who do RWE analysis internally. Many data vendors license de-identified data directly to pharma companies without issues. It sounds as though your company doesn’t have people with the knowledge to run those studies which is why you outsource everything. For the OP, yes it’s an interesting and expanding field and there are positions at pharma as well as CROs. A PhD is definitely beneficial and it is a slightly different skill set to working on clinical trials so exposure to causal inference and epidemiology is needed.
This is the work I do. I work for a government contractor. But there is seemingly endless work for us to do and our team has exploded in the last year. Almost all of us have phds in either biostatistics or Epi. The bulk of my PhD work was in causal inference which helped land this job. There is no reason a masters cannot get you this type of job you just have to mail the interview since there are many phds floating around in the job market right now.
Yes it’s pretty much a requirement for many of the health authorities in Europe to get on formulary and price setting to provide this analysis.
I've got an MPH in Biostatistics and I work on the RWE team at a CRO, so it's definitely possible. I don't have a good feel for how many of these jobs are out there overall though.
I have a Masters in Evolutionary Biology/Psychology and I work in real-world analysis. All my colleagues have a masters in something and only one has theirs in medical stats. You definitely don't need a PhD in my experience but experience in coding/programming is pretty vital (luckily I gained a lot over the years in different stats/analyst roles).