Going East

Multinational pharmaceutical companies look to employ statisticians in China

This column is written for statisticians with master’s degrees and highlights areas of employment that will benefit statisticians at the master’s level. Comments and suggestions should be sent to Keith Crank, the ASA’s research and graduate education manager, at keith@amstat.org.

Contributing Editors
Coco Fan is a consultant for Foster Partners RSA Executive Search, where she is responsible for developing domestic business within the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors. She earned her BA in marketing from Shanghai JiaoTong University.

Ping Zhan is principal statistician with AstraZeneca, based at Innovation Center China in Shanghai. She earned an MS in statistics from The University of Chicago and a PhD in biology from the University of Notre Dame.

A 2002 analysis report of China’s growing drug market by Boston Consulting Group states “[B]y 2010, we expect the country to emerge as the fifth-largest pharmaceutical market in the world, with revenues of over $24 billion—more than triple its current size.” China, which is the world’s third-largest pharmaceutical market after the United States and Japan, grew faster than expected. Drug sales are predicted to increase 25%–27% to more than $50 billion next year, overtaking Japan’s by 2015.
China’s ascent has forced western drugmakers to revise their growth strategies. Multinational pharmaceutical companies continue to increase their investment in China, developing drugs for diseases more prevalent in Asia, choosing local contract research organizations to shape up their outsourcing strategies, and competing for a growing market. Their common goal of enhancing profitability leads them to search for ways to develop innovative treatment modalities that increase productivity and decrease costs. Statistics plays an important role in transforming drug development strategy from a trial-and-error to a data-driven decisionmaking process that produces safe, efficacious, and differentiated drugs. In the dawn of personalized medicine, statisticians are working side by side with biologists to identify predictive biomarkers for patient population selection.

The talent gap in China’s pharmaceutical industry is enormous, as there has never been a role for statisticians in pre-clinical and clinical application areas. Working closely with big pharmaceutical companies, we found that drugmakers are looking for statisticians from the West or who were trained in the West to meet their needs. Specifically, they are looking for candidates with an MSc in statistics and strong technical capability. Several years of relevant working experience and good communication skills also are important, as statisticians frequently work closely with multidisciplinary teams.

The sites opened by Western pharmaceutical companies in China primarily employ young and locally recruited people. Many have studied or worked overseas and embrace Western culture while maintaining Chinese traditions. They are fluent in written and verbal English. The office space and culture are very much like other Western sites. Performance reviews and promotions follow the corporate process, regardless of location. Also, exposure to further technical training and international conferences is the same. In fact, changes in the work day are minimal when working for a Western pharmaceutical company in China.