Transcript Slide 1

Planning To Communicate
Bringing the Full Value of
Pharmacometrics to the Drug
Development Process
Tim Sheiner
Presented at PAGE Copenhagen
14 June 2007
© Pharsight Corporation All Rights Reserved
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Who Am I?
My name is Tim Sheiner. I am Director of User Experience for Pharsight
Corporation and I am located in San Francisco, California, USA.
Like you, I believe that Model Based Drug Development methods are
positively transforming the world’s ability to treat disease.
Unlike you, I do not contribute to this change by advancing the science of
MBDD or using the methods to create new information.
Rather, I contribute by developing tools to help people who understand
Model Based Drug Development communicate more effectively with those
who are still learning to understand it.
‘MBDD’
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‘?’
What Will I Talk About Today?
Today I plan to share what I have come to understand as the 3 essential pieces
that must come together to solve the challenge of communicating the value of
MBDD.
Accepting the Communication Job
Finding a Sturdy Communication Framework
Using Appropriate Tools
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Before We Begin, An Example for Context
To create a shared context for us to talk about effective communication of
scientific information, I’d like to show you a two minute segment from a
brilliant presentation by Hans Rosling, professor of international health at
Sweden's Karolinska Institute
This presentation was recorded at the TED Conference, February, 2006.
The video can be downloaded here:
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=hans_rosling
I will play about 2 minutes between timestamp 2:56 and 5:03
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Accepting the Communication Job
You cannot communicate well until you realize that communication is part of
you job responsibilities, just as modeling is.
What does it mean when communication is a job responsibility?
● You think explicitly about communication as a skill you need to develop
● You know that sharing information is just as important as creating it
● You believe that what matters is what others hear, not what you say
Mentor
You
Marketing
Peer
You
Peer
Biostats
Colleague
Graduate School
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Clinical
Mgmt
Pharma Inc.
A Sturdy Communication Framework
The second piece in the solution to communicating the value of MBDD
effectively is a simple and useful conceptual framework for communication.
I suggest this 3 step model as both a framework for thinking about
communication generally and as a structure for organizing the elements of any
specific communication opportunity.
Assess
the
Opportunity
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Formulate
the
Strategy
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Produce
the
Experience
A Modular Framework
Each step in the framework organizes a separate set of related components.
The key to communication success is understanding each of these components in
detail while at the same time being able to deliver a communication experience
that integrates across them all.
Assess
• Audience
• Problem
• Venue
• Message
• Narrative
• Evidence
Opportunity
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Formulate
Strategy
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Produce
• Medium
• Display
• Language
Experience
Step 1: Assess the Opportunity
Assessing the opportunity is mostly to do with understanding the needs and
expectations of people.
The challenge here is talk and think seriously about the importance of emotion
and empathy in communication. And being able to think creatively about
problems.
Assess
scientific
clinical
executive
Audience
technical
tactical
strategic
political
casual
email
meeting
presentation
Problem
Venue
Opportunity
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Step 2: Formulate the Strategy
Formulating the strategy is about creative and critical thinking and the ability
to look at an issue from different perspectives.
Here the work is in developing a creative process, storytelling, and the
understanding the interplay between personality types and their preferred
communication styles.
Formulate
report
analysis
recommendation
Message
temporal
personal
conceptual
Narrative
data
experience
Evidence
Strategy
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theory
Step 3: Produce the Experience
Producing the experience is a combination of crafting communication
artifacts and delivering a performance.
The difficulty is to manage the time required to learn theories of graphic design,
visualization and presentation with that required to gain hands-on experience
using state of the art tools.
Produce
print
powerpoint
animation
Medium
text
table
plot
Display
jargon
terminology
Language
Experience
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general
This Framework Should Be Familiar
You already understand how to solve communication problems because,
conceptually, they involves the same steps as modeling.
The largest part of your communication success will come from simply
recognizing that communication is a problem you need to solve.
Communicating
Assess
the
Opportunity
Formulate
the
Strategy
Produce
the
Experience
Observational
Skills
Critical Thinking
Skills
Craft
Skills
Analyze
the
Problem
Formulate
the
Model
Fit
the
Model
Modeling
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Appropriate Tools
The last piece required to communicate effectively about MBDD is a practice
of thinking carefully about the appropriateness of your communication tools.
Appropriate = Situationally Correct
Using appropriate tools, then, means
thinking both broadly and specifically
• You must think very broadly
about what can be a
communication tool
• But you must think very
specifically about when to use
any tool
I will use the following examples to
discuss some characteristics of
appropriate tools.
Understanding “Appropriate”
S-PLUS is an appropriate tool for creating an observed
vs. predicted plot. Sometimes that plot is appropriate
for communicating with others about your model, but
often it is not.
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The Audience Defines What Is Appropriate
Lessons from building a communication tool.
We conceived DMX as a tool
for displaying the model
predicted response for
specific locations in model
space.
In our initial testing, however,
we discovered that for DMX’s
true audience—the nonmodelers on the development
team—DMX was actually
serving as a enabler tool for
communicating about
uncertainty, a much more
fundamental conceptual tool
in decision making.
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If the Audience Does Not See It, It Does Not Exist
Talking to yourself is not communicating.
We tried to highlight the
capacity to display
uncertainty by adding a
feature that showed the
predicted likelihood of
achieving a target response.
We found that users, both
modelers and non-modelers
could not “see” this powerful
feature.
We concluded the feature was
not having an impact because
the context in which it was
being displayed, a response
view, was not appropriate.
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Simple Is OK
Showing less can communicate more.
We decided to add a new
concept to DMX, a “profile”
and design a new
visualization that created an
appropriate context for
“seeing” the concept.
We did not add any
information to the display, we
just changed the emphasis of
the information.
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People Need Choice
No one is ever comfortable with one option.
Finally we thought that if a
profile was actually an
appropriate context for
thinking about drug effect,
then people would inevitably
want to compare profiles.
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Appropriate Tools Create Connections
Serendipity happens.
We were immensely pleased
to learn a few months ago
that the FDA is also wondering
if a profile is an appropriate
tool for talking about drug
development?
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Reconsidering Mr. Rosling
We can deconstruct his presentation to understand why it moves us.
Hans Rosling moves us because he has organized a complex layering of tools
•
•
•
•
•
a simple, surprising and powerful story
attractive and intuitive graphics
animation
dynamic body language
humor and pathos
Performance
Animation
Graphics
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Summary
To be an effective communicator you need to do three things.
Accept the Communication Job
Find a Sturdy Communication Framework
Use Appropriate Tools
It’s been an honor to address you.
Thanks for your attention.
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