Fisher/Shafer NONMEM (Version 6) Course Availability: Ghent 2007

Subject: Fisher/Shafer NONMEM 6 Course Availability - Ghent, Belgium Dates: Dates: Wednesday, March 7, 2007 through Sunday, March 11, 2007 Course Organizers: Dennis Fisher, MD, The "P <" Company Steve Shafer, MD, Stanford University Web Site: http://www.nonmemcourse.com There are still seats available for the fourth Fisher/Shafer NONMEM 6 Workshop will be held Wednesday, March 7, 2007 through Sunday, March 11, 2007 at Het Pand in Ghent, Belgium. The Fisher/Shafer NONMEM Workshop covers NONMEM (version 6), data handling, model building, and model diagnostics. The workshop includes an extensive set of example problems ranging from simple didactic examples to demonstrate basic concepts to complex examples from the instructor's own experience. Registrants are provided with an comprehensive set of graphical tools programmed in the R and S-plus statistical languages to create high-quality diagnostic and analysis plots. Registrants are given Windows and UNIX scripts to organize NONMEM analyses and provide audit trails. The distinguishing characteristic of this workshop is that each individual brings his or her laptop computer. A copy of NONMEM, the GNU Fortran Compiler, the Windows and UNIX scripts, the full set of examples, and R are all provided to the users on a USB drive (flash drive) on Thursday morning (Wednesday afternoon for those in the Introduction to NONMEM workshop - see below). The entire course is run from the USB drive, leaving no footprint on the registrant's computer. NONMEM is removed at the end of the course, but the other software is in the public domain and may be kept after the course. The registrant follows along with the instructors, testing examples on his or her laptop as the instructor works through the concepts. The workshop runs from Thursday morning until Sunday noon. Each day includes 6 hours of instruction, ending at 2 pm. From 2 pm until 4 pm, registrants work on either the example problems, or on a data set of the registrant's choosing (frequently a difficult problem from work). The course is intended for individuals at the intermediate level. Those without substantial NONMEM experience are urged to sign up for the beginner's workshop described below. This should be adequate preparation to allow the novice to follow the main workshop. Because NONMEM is such a flexible tool, experienced NONMEM users have found the NONMEM Workshop valuable. In part, this is because the course instructors bring their unique perspectives to the application of NONMEM to data analysis. It is also because of the breadth of examples provided. Experienced users will find the introduction on Wednesday afternoon too basic, but they may find the R workshop or the Excel workshop on Wednesday morning to be useful. This course will be based on NONMEM 6, the recently released version of NONMEM from Globomax. Wednesday Half-Day Courses Programming in R Wednesday, 8 am - noon This course, given Wednesday morning, covers the R statistical programming language. Within the regular workshop, all participants will be introduced to the use of R to create diagnostic graphics for NONMEM. However, minimal time will be devoted to understanding the code used in these graphics. For those interested in a more extensive introduction to the use of R (and S-Plus), a remarkable tool for data management, graphics, and statistics, this session will focus on the use of R to read data, assemble a NONMEM dataset, perform basic (and complicated statistics), and generate graphics. Introduction to NONMEM Wednesday 1 pm - 5 pm For those with no prior experience with NONMEM, we will provide a day session on the Wednesday afternoon before the course to prepare you for the Intermediate course described above. Registrants will be taught the basic of NONMEM – the structure of a control stream and data file and the basic mechanics of running NONMEM The course description, schedule, and applications can be found at www.nonmemcourse.com. Sincerely, Steve Shafer -------------------------------------------------------- Steven L. Shafer, MD Professor, Department of Anesthesia, Stanford University Adjunct Professor, Biopharmaceutical Sciences, UCSF Editor-in-Chief, Anesthesia & Analgesia Office: 650 725-5866 FAX: 650 969-3315 Cell: 650 704-0558 Pager: 650 723-8222, pager 13477 Address: Department of Anesthesia Stanford University Medical Center Stanford, CA 94305