Student Internship in the Real World Data Department

Job content

The Position

You will be part of the Real World Data (RWD) team located in Basel, which consists of a diverse group of RWD scientists including pharmacoepidemiologists, statisticians, and data scientists. We work with meaningful data to generate impactful evidence and insights on our molecules/medicines and patients, that support R&D, advance scientific and medical knowledge, and enable personalized patient care and access. We partner with peers within the function and across the organization (e.g. Medical Affairs, Market Access, Drug Safety, Clinical Science, affiliates) to develop evidence generation strategies, identify evidence gaps and data sources, design and execute studies, and implement analyses to address molecule and disease area questions. The evidence and insights are ultimately used to inform the research and development of our molecules, and support healthcare decisions by patients, physicians, health authorities, payers, and policy-makers.

As an intern in the RWD team, you will work on developing and testing the validity of proxy measures of the Expanded Disability Severity Scale (EDSS), a key disability measure in Multiple Sclerosis (MS), which is often applied within clinical trials to test the efficacy of disease modifying therapies (DMTs). However in the real world setting, the EDSS is less frequently performed, and when performed it is often recorded in the unstructured notes of the electronic health record (EHR). As a result information on EDSS is rarely available in RWD. You will develop a data driven proxy measure of EDSS based on the structured data available in RWD (e.g. diagnosis codes, procedure codes), and test its concordance with EDSS extracted from the unstructured notes for the small proportion of patients for whom this data is available. This work will enable us to apply proxy measures of EDSS to a wider patient population within RWD and enable further analyses (e.g. RW comparative effectiveness of DMTs).

You would be expected to work on the following tasks:

• Review of the recent literature on proxy measures of EDSS and their validity
• Derive a data driven approach to replicate EDSS using a large scale RW database - the potential methodology can range from statistical to machine learning applications, and you would be expected to bring your perspective to the methodology
• Test the validity of the derived proxy measure(s)
• Explore the utility of applying the proxy measure in typical RWE studies e.g. comparative effectiveness of DMTs
  
  

You would gain hands-on experience of a RWD scientist’s day-to-day work, and will be supported throughout to obtain the experience you desire to enable your choice of future career. The anticipated benefits from this internship are an improvement of knowledge and experience of large RW databases and conducting typical RW studies to support drug development.

Use of R for this project is strongly preferred. There is scope for you to shape this project with your ideas. You will also be able to discuss ideas and collaborate with other RWD scientists working on this project across the globe. Depending on your interests you can participate in events such as trainings and seminars.

Who You Are
You are an enrolled student with a minimum of approximately three years undergraduate training with a focus on either epidemiology, statistics or data science; or a current graduate student (MSc or PhD) with a focus on either epidemiology, statistics or data science. Good knowledge of programming in R. Basic knowledge of RWD and longitudinal data analysis is a plus. Good communication skills in English.

The internship will ideally start in May 2022 and will last 3-4 months.

To be considered your application needs to:

• Include a valid certificate of enrollment, a cover letter and a CV. Non EU-EFTA citizens have to provide a certificate of mandatory internship in addition
• Include a short description of your academic courses and any relevant experience relating to R, longitudinal data analysis, and use of real world databases
  
  

Who we are

At Roche, more than 100,000 people across 100 countries are pushing back the frontiers of healthcare. Working together, we’ve become one of the world’s leading research-focused healthcare groups. Our success is built on innovation, curiosity and diversity.

Basel is the headquarters of the Roche Group and one of its most important centres of pharmaceutical research. Over 10,700 employees from over 100 countries come together at our Basel/Kaiseraugst site, which is one of Roche`s largest sites. Read more.

Besides extensive development and training opportunities, we offer flexible working options, 18 weeks of maternity leave and 10 weeks of gender independent partnership leave. Our employees also benefit from multiple services on site such as child-care facilities, medical services, restaurants and cafeterias, as well as various employee events.

We believe in the power of diversity and inclusion, and strive to identify and create opportunities that enable all people to bring their unique selves to Roche.

Roche is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Job Level:

Entry Level