Martina McMenamin

I joined the BSU as a PhD student in 2016 to work with Dr James Wason in the DART theme. Prior to this I studied at The University of Manchester for a BSc Actuarial Science and Mathematics and an MSc Statistics. My interests lie in improving the quality of trials conducted in rare diseases and small populations. I am currently working on developing joint modelling methods to increase the efficiency of clinical trials using composite endpoints. This involves aiming to avoid dichotomising outcomes measured on continuous and ordinal scales and instead retaining as much information about how close patients were to being ‘responders’ on their original scales. We are working with Anna Berglind in Global Medicines Development at AstraZeneca to develop the methods on data from trials in rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus, which commonly use dichotomised responder indices to evaluate treatments due to the complexity of the disease. The methods developed will have application in many other disease areas where these types of endpoints are commonly used.