To mark Clinical trials day 2026, in a video interview for Applied Clinical Trials, Sam Hinsley, statistics manager at Phastar, highlights the vital role statisticians play in improving clinical trial success. She reflects on how personal experience and professional responsibility intersect, emphasizing that statisticians are stewards of patient data and must balance innovation with rigor.
Sam underscores the importance of advancing statistical approaches, such as Bayesian methods, adaptive trial designs, and AI, to address increasing trial complexity, while ensuring collaboration across stakeholders to avoid misalignment in study design. She also points to the work of the Early Phase ESIG, a group she helped establish, which is focused on raising standards in early phase research. The interview concludes with a reminder of how critical early decisions are, with only around 10% of drugs progressing from first-in-human trials to approval.