Activity report 2021 of the Statistical Committee
The EBMT Statistical Committee was funded in 2004 (initially as Sub-Committee) with the aim of being a meeting place for EBMT-related statisticians and methodologists. Currently it is in part overlapping with the EBMT statistical units° of Leiden and Paris, and involving 4 external members with long-lasting collaboration with EBMT (R. Szydlo, London Hammersmith; A. Santucci, Perugia University; L. de Wreede and H. Putter, Leiden LUMC).
°This report regards the work carried out within the activities coordinated by the Statistical Committee, and does not regard the work done as part of the standard statistical support to other EBMT units, nor the work done within specific consultancy agreement by external members.
Activity Report 2021
Most of the activity in 2021 regarded the “Missing Values” project. The project was presented to the Board and approved in October 2020. It aims at unifying approaches to the investigation and management of missing values in the EBMT studies.
Planned deliveries are practical tools for the EBMT staff and community: illustrative case studies; statistical guidelines and “consensus” on methods; R and SPSS codes for Data Office staff and statisticians.
Currently the project focuses especially on missing values in the covariates (as opposed to missing follow-up forms and missing information on specific events during follow-up). The following diagram illustrates the structure of the project and the current level of completeness for the boxes 1-4 and 7-8, which were the targets of the work planned in 2021:
All members of the EBMT Statistical Unit present at the beginning of the year have contributed to the work, and among the external members in particular Liesbeth de Wreede and Hein Putter from LUMC were involved, also as supervisors of theoretical and simulations’ work by:
- Edouard Bonneville (Leiden, LUMC ; PhD student)
- Junran Ge (Leiden, LUMC ; Master student)
Among the Committee Educational activities, the annual One-day basic course was successfully held virtually by Richard Szydlo and Antonella Santucci in March 2021, while the Four-days EBMT Statistics Course was not planned due to the persistent pandemic situation.
Regarding the Consultancy aspect, it is important to stress the discussion regarding the conduction of the PASS studies, in particular the management of the data flow, which lead the Committee to send concerns and suggestions in a Letter to the Board (17/05/2021).
International collaborations were strengthened by inviting Mei-Jie Zhang (CIBMTR) and Nicole Erler (Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, the Netherlands) as speakers in the Statistical Symposium of the annual conference.