I can’t believe it has already been a year since we wrapped up PHUSE EU Connect 2024, and in two weeks we will be gathering another exciting PHUSE EU Connect conference, only a few kilometers from Heidelberg, where everything started twenty years ago with the very first PHUSE event. I was one of the couple hundred lucky attendees and now, twenty years later, I have the great honor of supporting Jennie McGuirk and Jinesh Patel as Conference Co-chair for this year’s edition.

With a promising agenda featuring about 190 presentations, 34 posters, 9 hands-on workshops, 2 panel discussions, and 3 inspiring keynote speakers, this year we are going to the city of Hamburg for the 21st PHUSE EU Connect. The agenda is full of topics looking toward the future, with about 40 talks and posters referring to AI in their titles, and once again open source will be the confirmed leitmotif.

Cytel will make a significant contribution this year, perhaps more than ever, with six presentations, one poster, active participation in both panel discussions, and co-chairing the “Scripts, Macros and Automation” and “People Leadership & Management” streams.

Monday topics: Agile code writing, extracting metadata from R OOP functions, and leadership

The week kicks off on Monday with Kamil Foltynski, who will present “Overcoming Challenges in Collaborative Spreadsheet Editing with Shiny, SpreadJS and JSON-Patch” in the Application Development stream at 11:30 am. Kamil will provide a technical deep dive into enabling real-time spreadsheet editing within Shiny applications, using tools such as SpreadJS, sharing key lessons learned so far. Following Kamil’s presentation, Eswara Satyanarayana Gunisetti, will present “Micro-Decisions, Macro Impact: The Role of Agile Thinking in Every Line of Code” in the “Coding Tips & Tricks” stream at 12 pm. See his recent blog on the topic. Eswara will share how an agile “mindset” can positively influence the way we write code.

In the same stream, a few hours later at 2 pm, another colleague Edward Gillian, in collaboration with Sanofi, will present “Risk.assessr: Extracting OOP Function Details,” discussing strategies for extracting metadata from R Object-Oriented Programming functions. Prior to Eswara and Edward’s sessions, at 1:30 pm, Kath Wright, will moderate the Interactive People Leadership & Management session “Invisible Glue: Trust, Influence and The Architecture of Teamwork.” With this live workshop, attendees will engage in practical exercises to learn how to identify barriers to trust, evaluate influence dynamics, and apply evidence-based strategies to strengthen collaboration in both physical and virtual environments.

Tuesday topics: Industry trends, extracting macro usage and dependency information from SAS programs, and integrating ECA data into CDISC-compliant datasets

Tuesday also brings two presentations and one poster. Right after lunch at 1:30 pm, Cedric Marchand will join other industry leaders in the panel discussion “Reimagining Statistical Programming: AI, Standards & the Talent of Tomorrow.” The panel will explore how current industry trends, such as AI, open source, and the evolution of data standards, will influence the next generation of statistical programmers.

The afternoon continues at 4 pm with my young and talented colleague Marie Poupelin, who will present “From Zero to Programming Hero: How Internships Shape Statistical Programmers in a CRO” in the “Professional Development” stream. Marie is a great example of the success of our internship program, and she will share her journey from having “zero” statistical programming experience to becoming an industry-ready programmer. Thirty minutes later, at 4:30 pm, Guido Wendland will present “Which Macros Are Used in the Study?” in the “Scripts, Macros and Automation” stream, a stream co-led this year for the first time by my colleague Sebastià Barceló. Guido will discuss techniques to extract macro usage and dependency information from SAS programs; this is particularly useful for identifying potential issues or estimating the impact of macro updates.

Later, in the traditional Tuesday evening poster session, you can join my colleague Cyril Sombrin in discussing “Our Journey in Integrating External Control Arms (ECAs) and RWD for Rare Disease Trials.” There you can discuss real-world case studies on integrating ECA data into CDISC-compliant datasets, exploring the unique challenges and solutions when aligning real-world data with CDISC standards.

Wednesday topics: Real-time spreadsheet editing within Shiny applications and real-time validation and streamlined submissions

On Wednesday at 12 pm, Hugo Signol, another young talented Cytel statistical programmer and a product of our internship program, will present his talk “From XPT to Dataset-JSON: Enabling Real-Time Validation and Streamlined Submissions.” Building on Cytel’s experience from CDISC Dataset-JSON-Viewer Hackathon, Hugo will demonstrate a Shiny application that supports interactive exploration and real-time validation through API-based checks.

Meet us there!

Cytel will be at Booth 9 at the conference, where you can engage in discussions with our team or meet any of us throughout the week.

I hope I didn’t miss anyone, or anything! We look forward again to reuniting with colleagues and friends from around the world and meeting new acquaintances.

See you all in Hamburg!

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