From left: Gajanan Bhat of Spectrum Pharma, Paul Stone of Allergan PLC, Ulo Palm of Allergan PLC, Janet Wittes of Statistics Collaborative, Narimon Honarpour of Amgen, and Amy Xia of Amgen

The inaugural Orange County ASA biostatistics symposium was held May 3 on the Allergan campus in Irvine, California. The event drew more than 170 attendees—including statisticians from the pharmaceutical industry, medical device industry, CROs, and academia—and many graduate students. The main topic of the symposium was improving drug and device development through innovative designs.

Janet Wittes of Statistics Collaborative gave the keynote talk, titled “When Is Near-Optimality Not Good Enough?” Two clinicians—Ulo Palm of Allergan and Narimon Honarpour of Amgen—shared their experiences and discussed how statisticians can better contribute to the drug and device development process in an ever-changing industry. Eleven other presentations covered a wide range of topics such as expediated drug development pathways and their effectiveness, use of real-world data in drug and device development, adaptive design, and artificial intelligence–based diagnostic devices. The event concluded with an evening reception.

The symposium, the first to be conducted in Orange County, was a success.