Profile
Jan McKendrick
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About Me:
I live just outside London with my husband and crazy cocker spaniel, Harley. I work in medical statistics and health economics in the day but outside work I really like tennis, walking the dog and singing in choirs. I really love traveling and am always planning our next holiday (with or without my grown up children)
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My pronouns are:
She/her
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My Work:
My job is like a detective who uses numbers and maths to help doctors and hospitals make sure that medicines that work well can be used to help patients feel better and hopefully live longer.
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My job is a really interesting way to use maths (and statistics) in a way which helps patients get medicines that can help them. There are lots of things that happen to have a new medicines and my part is small but important – and its not just people who work in labs or people who are doctors that are needed. I never even knew this job existed while I was at school.
My job can be making sense of data in an Excel file, it can be learning about how to do a new analysis or giving a presentation about things we have found in the analysis. Not everyone is comfortable with maths / statistics so its also really important that you can explain things clearly and easily – that is a big part of what I do and I really enjoy it. I can be a bit like teaching – you want to explain things in an easy way to help people understand.
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My Typical Day:
I start my day around 8am by checking my many emails to see if there is anything urgent that I need to do today. I then either review reports written about the work we are doing, or meet with project teams to figure out what we need to do next on the projects.
I often have meetings to catch up on various things around the business and my team.
My day ends with a list of things to do tomorrow (which often changes over night when my colleagues in the US and Asia think about what they need me to do).
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The most interesting part of my job is where we are trying to figure out what the numbers and data are telling us to help tell a story about a new medicine. I really like that my job lets me be good at what I know (maths) in an area I am really interested in (health)
We see lots of data (often in Excel spreadsheets) and try to find the interesting things it is telling us – and then work out how to tell other people those things in an easy way for them to understand.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I like to see people understanding how easy it is to look at data so I would look to provide licenses for some very simple packages to be used in schools to generate interesting graphics so that people can get engaged with data
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Education:
I went to Bridge of Don Academy in Aberdeen where I realised that I liked, and was pretty good at, maths. I also was very interested in medicine but knew I didnt want to be a doctor. I decided to go to university to study maths and statistics (my mum once worked in a statistics department and it sounded fun so I thought I would try it). I chose the University of Edinburgh because it particularly wanted girls to do maths.
I was very lucky that I got a summer placement at the medical school at the university and found that I could join up the numbers with medicine – and I’ve never looked back since. I went on to get a masters degree in medical statistics and then started work.
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Qualifications:
I have 8 (of the old) Scottish O grades (English, Maths, Arithmetic, Physics, Chemistry, French, Modern Studies, Music)
I have 6 (of the old) Scottish Highers (English, Maths, Physics, Chemistry, French, Modern Studies)
1 have 3 CSYS (like Scottish Advanced Highers) in Maths (Geometry + Calculus; Computing) and Chemistry
I have a (first class honours) BSc degree from the University of Edinburgh in Maths and Statistics
I have an MSc in Statistics with Applications in Medicine from the University of Southampton
I have a post graduate diploma in the Health Economics from University of Aberdeen
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Work History:
I started work for a company who makes medicines, analysing data from clinical trials which are experiments which test how new drugs work compared with other treatments. I learned a lot very quickly and loved my job, working with some really smart and nice people.
I then found a job for another company making medicines which was similar but different- it was more about deciding what data you need for people to understand how your drug works and what it will cost them to use it.
We then moved to the US and so I started being a consultant – working with lots of companies, giving them advice and also analysing data.
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Current Job:
In my current job I lead a team of 25 people who are very smart at what they do in health economics. We are consultants so we work with companies who make medicines, helping them think about what data they need and how best to get it. We often work with very large data sets to do complicated analyses or look at lots of reports from other trials and see how we can use that data.
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Employer:
I currently work for Avalere Health which is a company of around 1,500 hundred people based in London.
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
Numbers-detective for medicines
What did you want to be after you left school?
A maths and PE teacher
Were you ever in trouble at school?
I'm afraid not
If you weren't doing this job, what would you choose instead?
I think I would like to run a tea shop
Who is your favourite singer or band?
Deacon Blue
What's your favourite food?
I love Thai food, especially with prawns
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
Visit Iceland; Play tennis on the Wimbledon courts; Be better at gardening
Tell us a joke.
Why was the maths book sad? Because it had too many problems
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