If you’re not going to be there, we’ll do our best to keep you up to date with all the fun if you follow us on Twitter (@dianthusmed).

DIA Clinical Forum 2011 Dianthus Medical - An innovative company providing outside the box analytical solutions for the pharmaceutical industry and other organisations working in the biomedical sector.

Details here.

Medical writing training, October 2011 Dianthus Medical - An innovative company providing outside the box analytical solutions for the pharmaceutical industry and other organisations working in the biomedical sector.

EMWA conference 2011 Dianthus Medical - An innovative company providing outside the box analytical solutions for the pharmaceutical industry and other organisations working in the biomedical sector.

If you can’t make it, you can follow our news from the conference on Twitter. Follow us at @dianthusmed, or follow the hashtag #ICR2011.

ICR conference 2011 Dianthus Medical - An innovative company providing outside the box analytical solutions for the pharmaceutical industry and other organisations working in the biomedical sector.

The podcast is not intended as a comprehensive news roundup (the ICR website does that job nicely), but a chance to have a more in-depth look and a bit of a chat about a few of the news stories that particularly caught our attention. In the first episode, we talk about active controls in clinical trials, the Academy of Medical Sciences report on clinical research, a new FDA requirement for informed consent forms, the North-West Exemplar Project, a drug scandal involving a diabetes drug and the French regulator, and the sad news of the closure of Pfizer’s Sandwich plant.

You can find the podcast, and subscribe to future ones via the RSS feed, on the CRFocus page of the ICR website, or if you want to go straight to the podcast, you can find it here.

I shall certainly be listening to the podcast regularly, and hope to be back as guest presenter from time to time as well.

New podcast from the Institute of Clinical Research Dianthus Medical - An innovative company providing outside the box analytical solutions for the pharmaceutical industry and other organisations working in the biomedical sector.

The role will involve writing manuscripts for publication in peer-reviewed journals, clinical study reports for drug regulatory purposes, and a healthy variety of other documents. Relevant experience would be useful, but not essential, as full training will be provided. You must have excellent English language skills, a degree (or PhD) in a science discipline, an enthusiasm for writing, and good attention to detail.

To apply, please send a CV and covering letter to jobs at dianthus dot co dot uk. Please state your salary expectations and make sure your application includes the words turnip, frabjous, and codswallop.

No agencies

Medical writer vacancy Dianthus Medical - An innovative company providing outside the box analytical solutions for the pharmaceutical industry and other organisations working in the biomedical sector.

Evil Big Pharma Dianthus Medical - An innovative company providing outside the box analytical solutions for the pharmaceutical industry and other organisations working in the biomedical sector.

It’s a topic close to my heart, about which I have spoken many times before, but usually to audiences of medical writers. It will be nice to speak to a different audience and make the statistical community more aware of some of the issues of publication ethics.

European Statistical Forum Dianthus Medical - An innovative company providing outside the box analytical solutions for the pharmaceutical industry and other organisations working in the biomedical sector.

The journey here yesterday afternoon did not go smoothly, but at least I got here in the end, and I resisted the temptation to send any tweets about blowing up Heathrow Airport to vent my frustration with the delays. I was just in time for the opening lectures, the first given by Helen Baldwin, former EMWA president and British expat living near Nice, about life as a medical writer in the south of France. It sounds lovely. The second was given by EMWA’s resident language guru, Alistair Reeves, about why sensible people write daft things. It was thoroughly entertaining, as well as surprisingly educational. A good start to the conference. Rounded the evening off with a trip to the old town for dinner with some friends, always a pleasure to catch up.

This morning began with a plenary lecture on work-life balance and time management. Ironically, it over-ran, so I had to leave before the end to make sure I was ready for the workshop I was teaching. It was a new workshop, on ANOVA and regression analysis, destined for the EMWA advanced curriculum. I was, on the whole, quite pleased with how it went: no-one fell asleep, no-one left before the end, no-one threw anything, and I think one or two people may even have learnt something. One of the exercises was less successful than the other, so I may need to rethink that one next time. I guess that’s why EMWA has a policy of not counting workshops for credit towards professional development certificates the first time they’re run, just so little teething troubles like that can be fixed.

I chatted to one of the participants in the coffee break, who said that she’d been on a similar course last year, which hadn’t made much sense, but now it was all starting to fall into place and she felt she was really starting to understand it. I don’t think that necessarily means my course was any better than the one she’d been to before. It’s just that statistics can be a tricky subject to grasp, and sometimes you need to hear something more than once, perhaps in different ways, before it finally makes sense. Maybe other participants in the workshop will have gone away baffled, but will nonetheless be better placed to learn when they next go to a statistics course.

I wasn’t teaching this afternoon, so I was able to catch up on some emails, and was also absolutely delighted to see that the hashtag #IAmSpartacus was the top trending topic on Twitter. It was very depressing to see the crazy guilty verdict in the Twitter Joke Trial yesterday, but the #IAMSpartacus hashtag really restored my faith in human nature. Truly heartwarming stuff.

The hotel that the conference is taking place in is on the seafront, a little way away from the centre of Nice, and luckily I had enough time after checking my emails to go for a really delightful run along the seafront as far as the harbour and back again. It’s a truly beautiful bit of scenery.

Well, the official parts of the conference have finished for today, but I’ll be off for dinner soon with some good friends. Medical writers are a friendly bunch, and many of the people I know from EMWA conferences have become very good friends over the years. Dinner should be thoroughly enjoyable.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be teaching again, this time on basic concepts of clinical study design. Then back home tomorrow afternoon.

EMWA conference in Nice, day 1 Dianthus Medical - An innovative company providing outside the box analytical solutions for the pharmaceutical industry and other organisations working in the biomedical sector.

I hope to see you there!

Autumn EMWA conference now open for booking Dianthus Medical - An innovative company providing outside the box analytical solutions for the pharmaceutical industry and other organisations working in the biomedical sector.