Skip to main content
Philip Pallmann

Dr Philip Pallmann

(he/him)

Senior Research Fellow

School of Medicine

Email
PallmannP@cardiff.ac.uk
Campuses
Neuadd Meirionnydd, Room 505, 5th floor, University Hospital of Wales, Heath Park, Cardiff, CF14 4YS
Users
Available for postgraduate supervision

Overview

I am a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Trials Research where I work as a medical statistician on the design, conduct, analysis, and reporting of randomised controlled trials and other well-designed studies.

My background is in applied statistics, but I work across a wide range of clinical areas including infections, neurodegenerative diseases, and population health, as well as on the advancement of clinical trials methodology, in particular efficient design methods such as adaptive designs.

I co-lead the Adaptive Designs Working Group of the MRC-NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership together with Sofía Villar.

I am a member of the MRC-NIHR Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) funding committee.

I am an Associate Editor for the peer-reviewed journal Trials.

Publication

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

Articles

Conferences

Monographs

Websites

Research

Summary of my research

I currently work on a number of trials (including BATCH, CLARITY, DocTIS, LISTEN, OBS UK, PLACEMENT, PRECISE, PRONTOSaFE, SWIS, TIPTOE) and observational studies (including DOMINO-HD, Family VOICEPEACH and PERCEIVE). I am the chief investigator for PROTECT. Previous studies I have worked on include FLAME, TAPERS and TRIDENT.

I have been actively involved in the ACE Project to develop an official CONSORT extension for clinical trials with an adaptive design, the PANDA Project to create an educational online platform about adaptive designs, the CAT Project to develop best practice costing guidance for CTUs supporting adaptive design trials, and the ROBIN Project to develop best practice guidance for conducting interim analyses in late-phase trials.

I have (co-)authored and/or am the maintainer of a number of R packages that are freely available on CRAN, including MAMS (multi-arm multi-stage studies), BayesMAMS (Bayesian multi-arm multi-stage studies), jocre (joint confidence regions), modest (model-based dose-escalation trials), ANOM (analysis of means) and simboot (simultaneous inference for diversity indices).

From 2017 to 2023 I was the Deputy Director of the Research Design and Conduct Service (RDCS) for South East Wales, which worked with NHS and social care staff to develop high-quality funding applications for innovative research projects in health and social care.

Recently awarded grant funding

2023

  • NIHR HTA: Randomised trial examining clinical and cost effectiveness of three antithrombotic regimens following endovascular lower limb revascularisation for chronic limb threatening ischaemia: CLARITY (clopidogrel, aspirin and rivaroxaban after revascularisation with angioplasty) (£2,575,967)
  • NIHR HTA: Platform randomised evaluation of clinical outcomes using novel technologies to optimise antimicrobial therapy (PROTECT) (£204,987, Chief Investigator)

2022

  • NIHR HSDR: Clinical and cost-effectiveness of a maternity quality improvement programme to reduce excess bleeding and need for transfusion after childbirth: the obstetric bleeding study UK (OBS UK) stepped wedge cluster randomised trial (£3,650,790)
  • NIHR HTA: Multi-domain self-management in older people with osteoarthritis and multi-morbidities (TIPTOE) (£1,711,355)
  • NIHR CTU Support Funding: Robust interims for adaptive designs (ROBIN): developing best practice for high-quality and speedy interim analyses in phase II-IV trials (£71,238)
  • NIHR HTA: Perineural local anaesthetic catheter after major lower limb amputation (PLACEMENT) (£1,635,918)

2021

  • NIHR Long COVID call: Long COVID personalised self-management support – co-design and evaluation (LISTEN) (£1,055,520)
  • NIHR HS&DR: Family group conferencing for children and families: evaluation of implementation, context and effectiveness (Family VOICE) (£1,194,736)

2020

  • NIHR HTA: Procalcitonin: evaluation of antibiotic use in COVID-19 hospitalised patients (PEACH) (£731,858)
  • HCRW RfPPB: PERCEIVE: prediction of risk and communication of outcome following major lower limb amputation – a collaborative study (£229,225)
  • DfE WWCSC: Social workers in schools scale-up (SWIS) (£385,597)
  • NIHR EME: MR-pro-adrenomedullin (MR-proADM) and ImmunoXpert evaluation of procalcitonin-guided antibiotic duration in children with infection for stratification of effectiveness (PRECISE) (£385,450)

2019

  • HCRW CTU Infrastructure Funding: Centre for Trials Research 2020-23 (£2,470,489)
  • NIHR CTU Support Funding: Costing adaptive trials (CAT): developing best practice costing guidance for CTUs supporting adaptive trials (£55,629)
  • NIHR HTA: Procalcitonin and NEWS evaluation for timely identification of sepsis and optimal use of antibiotics in the emergency department (PRONTO) (£1,968,786)
  • NIHR PHR: Optimisation, feasibility testing and a pilot randomised trial of SaFE: a sexual health and healthy relationships intervention for further education (£510,815)
  • EU H2020: Decision on optimal combinatorial therapies in IMIDs using systems approaches (DocTIS) (€6,260,050)

2018

  • EU JPND Research: Multi-domain lifestyle targets for improving prognosis in Huntington's disease (DOMINO-HD) (€2,057,969)
  • NIHR CTU Support Funding: A practical adaptive and novel designs toolkit (PANDA) (£98,886)
  • HCRW RfPPB: Treating anxiety to prevent relapse in schizophrenia (TAPERS) – a feasibility trial (£229,865)

Biography

Education and qualifications

  • 2016: PhD Biostatistics, Leibniz Universität Hannover
  • 2012: MSc Plant Biotechnology, Leibniz Universität Hannover
  • 2010: BSc Plant Biotechnology, Leibniz Universität Hannover

Honours and awards

  • 2013: Bernd Streitberg Award of the International Biometric Society (German Region) for my MSc dissertation Two-sample tests and multiple contrast tests of several diversity indices
  • 2012: Second Prize for Best Student Oral Presentation at the 36th International Biometric Conference in Kobe, Japan

Professional memberships

  • Co-lead of the Adaptive Designs Working Group, MRC-NIHR Trials Methodology Research Partnership (previously: MRC Network of Hubs for Trials Methodology Research)
  • Member of the European Huntington's Disease Network

Academic positions

  • 2022 - present: Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Trials Research, Cardiff University
  • 2017 - 2023: RDCS Deputy Director, Centre for Trials Research, Cardiff University
  • 2017 - 2022: Research Fellow, Centre for Trials Research, Cardiff University
  • 2015 - 2017: Senior Research Associate, Department of Mathematics & Statistics, Lancaster University
  • 2012 - 2015: Research Associate, Institute of Biostatistics, Leibniz Universität Hannover
  • 2010 - 2012: Research Assistant, Institute of Biostatistics, Leibniz Universität Hannover
  • 2009 - 2010: Teaching Assistant, Institute of Plant Diseases and Plant Protection, Leibniz Universität Hannover

Speaking engagements

Conference presentations (selected)

  • Challenges of designing and delivering a stepped-wedge cluster-randomised trial of a complex intervention bundle in maternity care using routinely collected healthcare data. 9th Annual Meeting on Current Developments in Cluster Randomised Trials and Stepped Wedge Designs, London, UK. 9 November 2023. Co-authors: Sarah Kotecha, Julia Townson, Dimitrios Profer, Amy Elsmore, William Parry-Smith, Peter Collins, Sarah Bell.
  • Trial designs with co-primary superiority and non-inferiority endpoints: methodological discussion points and practical guidance. 6th International Clinical Trials Methodology Conference, Harrogate, UK. 5 October 2022. Co-authors: Simon Schoenbuchner, Abin Thomas, David Gillespie.
  • Simultaneous confidence regions for multi-parameter bioequivalence. 62nd Biometrisches Kolloquium & DAGStat, Göttingen, Germany. 18 March 2016. Co-author: Thomas Jaki.
  • Multiple contrast tests with longitudinal data. International Conference on Simultaneous Inference, Hannover, Germany. 25 September 2013.
  • Establishing bioequivalence in AB/BA cross-over trials using the ratio of AUCs estimated from sparse sampling designs. 59th Biometrisches Kolloquium & DAGStat, Freiburg, Germany. 19 March 2013. Co-authors: Thomas Jaki, Martin J Wolfsegger.
  • Comparing biodiversity by simultaneously testing a user-defined selection of diversity indices. 36th International Biometric Conference, Kobe, Japan. 30 August 2012.
  • Comparing biodiversity by simultaneously testing a user-defined selection of diversity indices. 58th Biometrisches Kolloquium, Berlin, Germany. 14 March 2012.

Conference posters (selected)

  • Efficient model-based dose escalation at your fingertips: a simple software tool to design and evaluate phase I cancer trials. NCRI Cancer Conference, Liverpool, UK. 6 November 2017. Co-authors: Fang Wan, Christina Yap, Adrian P Mander, Graham M Wheeler, Sally Clive, Thomas Jaki, Lisa V Hampson.
  • Designing multi-arm multi-stage trials with the R package 'MAMS'. PSI Conference, Berlin, Germany. 23 May 2016. Co-authors: Thomas Jaki, Dominic Magirr.
  • Analysis of means with the R package 'ANOM'. 62nd Biometrisches Kolloquium & DAGStat, Göttingen, Germany. 16 March 2016. Co-author: Ludwig A Hothorn.
  • Simultaneous small-sample inference in longitudinal settings using multiple contrasts. 60th Biometrisches Kolloquium, Bremen, Germany. 12 March 2014.

Committees and reviewing

External oversight committees

Funding committees

  • Funding committee member for MRC-NIHR EME (since 2022)
  • Associate funding committee member for NIHR HTA (2021-2022)

Editorial duties

  • Associate Editor for Trials

Reviewing

  • Grant application reviewer for NIHR (HTA, EME, PHR, HS&DR), MRC (BMC DPFS, Better Methods Better Research), MRC-NIHR (Methodology Research Programme), HRB TMRN/MRC-NIHR TMRP (Working Group Project Seed Co-funding), UKRI (Future Leaders Fellowship), HCRW (PhD Health Studentship, Pathway to Portfolio) as well as internationally (DFG - German Science Foundation; NCN - Polish National Science Centre; ZonMW - Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development)
  • Final report reviewer for NIHR (HTA, PHR)
  • Abstract reviewer for ESPID 38th Annual Meeting 2020, ICTMC 2022
  • Book proposal reviewer for Cambridge University Press
  • Manuscript reviewer for journals including Statistics in Medicine, Journal of Statistical Software, Biometrical Journal, The American Statistician, Statistical Methods in Medical Research, Statistical Papers, Statistics, Stat, Journal of Applied Statistics, Journal of Biopharmaceutical Statistics, Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation, Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, Statistica Neerlandica, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, Journal of Open Source Software, Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry, BMJ Open, PLOS One, Royal Society Open Science, Scientific Reports, PeerJ, Trials, Clinical Trials, Contemporary Clinical Trials, Journal of Infection, Frontiers in Neurology, BMJ Nutrition Prevention & Health, Transfusion, Journal of Clinical Medicine, eBioMedicine, Expert Review of Anti-Infective Therapy, Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Nature Human Behaviour, The AAPS Journal, The British Student Doctor Journal, Future Internet, Environmental Science & Pollution Research, Pest Management Science (see my Publons profile)

Supervisions

Current supervision

Andreas Markoulidakis

Andreas Markoulidakis

Research student

Tamas Barry

Tamas Barry

Research student

Past projects

  • Co-supervisor for Andreas Markoulidakis – Statistical methods for the identification and modelling of lifestyle factors related to Huntington's disease severity and progression (PhD, 2024, with Peter Holmans, Monica Busse, and Beth Ann Griffin)
  • Lead supervisor for Kittinan Praesertrungrueang – Developing and testing a novel prediction tool for clinical outcomes following major lower limb amputation (MSc Data Science and Analytics, 2023, with David Bosanquet and Brenig Gwilym)
  • Co-supervisor for William Blake – Applying causal inference techniques to estimate the impact of lifestyle variables on the severity of Huntington's disease (MSc Operational Research and Applied Statistics, 2022, with Andreas Markoulidakis and Monica Busse)
  • Co-supervisor for Saif Abbas Chatoo – Antibiotic prescribing in hospitalised patients with COVID-19 as a function of inflammatory markers in wave 1 versus wave 2: a systematic review (Intercalated BSc Population Medicine, 2022, with Joanne Euden and Emma Thomas-Jones)

Specialisms

  • Statistics
  • Applied statistics
  • Applied clinical research
  • Evidence-based care
  • NHS