Sandy Griffith

Affiliation
Principal Methodologist on Quantitative Sciences, Flatiron Health

Education
MS and PhD, Biostatistics, University of Pennsylvania
MS, Biomedical Science, Drexel University
BA, Psychology, Temple University

Sandy Griffith is a principal methodologist on the quantitative sciences team at Flatiron Health, a healthcare technology company based in New York City that marries clinical and data science to improve outcomes for cancer patients. Prior to this role, she was assistant professor of medicine in the department of quantitative health sciences at Cleveland Clinic and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Griffith grew up in Pennsylvania and studied a variety of subjects, taking a long and circuitous route before landing in biostatistics. Always drawn to science in one form or another, she started college as a biochemistry major, but her clumsy nature lent itself better to handling data than beakers and chemicals. Biostatistics emerged as a perfect combination of her inclination toward math and her affinity for science. Further, the wide variety of subject areas many biostatisticians work in has provided boundless interest and novelty; indeed, Griffith agrees with the famous quote by John Tukey: “The best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone’s backyard.” She has also enjoyed the flexibility of her training, allowing her to work in both academia and the tech industry.

Over the course of her career, Griffith has gravitated toward applied medical research with the potential to affect the lives of patients. This has included work with patient-reported outcome measures collected at the point of care at the Cleveland Clinic Neurological Institute. In her current role at Flatiron Health, Griffith works with real-world data derived from electronic health records in oncology. This work allows her to maximize impact by learning from the experience of every patient, not just the minority of cancer patients enrolled in clinical trials. In addition, she is able to focus on methodological interests around understanding data quality and analyzing incomplete data. Perhaps her most impactful work to date has been developing real-world endpoints in oncology using data collected in routine clinical care.

Griffith’s proudest moments have involved communicating complex statistical concepts to nonstatistical audiences in an approachable way by weaving in personal stories that carry emotional resonance.