11th Fisher/Shafer NONMEM/PLT Tools Workshop

Dear Colleagues: This is a reminder for the 11th NONMEM /PLT Tools Workshop, which will be held in San Francisco from Wednesday, April 14th through Saturday, April 17th, 2010. You can find the course description and registration details at http://www.nonmemcourse.com www.nonmemcourse.com. San Francisco is our most popular course, so early booking is recommended. Dennis and I are particularly pleased to use this workshop to introduce a new feature of PLT Tools: automated covariate identification. New routines built into PLT Tools permit automated exploration of the relationship between covariates and model parameters by creating NONMEM control files that systematically evaluate the matrix of model parameters and patient covariates. This is the most commonly requested feature of the program. Dennis and I do not plan on making automated covariate identification part of the free, downloadable version of PLT Tools until after the April Workshop. If you are interested in automatic covariate identification with NONMEM, please contact Dennis directly ( <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]) for a copy of the beta release. We welcome your feedback. This is an intermediate to advanced course on the use of the NONMEM system, closely integrated with the PLT Tools graphical user interface for the NONMEM System. Although the focus of the workshop is NONMEM, the more advanced diagnostics (e.g., visual predictive check, log-likelihood profiling, bootstrap analysis, jackknife validation) are presented in the context of PLT Tools because it automates the generation of these diagnostics. The new version of PLT Tools also supports analysis scripting and automatic report generation (in RTF format), frequent requests of NONMEM users in a production environment. The workshop will be based on NONMEM VI, the standard version of NONMEM for most users. However, PLT Tools fully supports NONMEM 7. If you are using NONMEM 7, or intend to switch to NONMEM 7, PLT Tools should ease the transition. PLT Tools also supports NMQUAL, for users who have incorporated NMQUAL into their work environment. Our NONMEM Workshops is now in their 6th year. Dennis and I have spent the past four years developing PLT Tools. We introduced PLT Tools at the 9th Fisher/Shafer NONMEM course in Bethesda, Maryland in 2009. The feedback from the 9th and 10th courses indicates that workshop participants appreciated having access to the powerful features of the PLT Tools program. You can download the fully functional unlicensed version of PLT Tools from http://www.pltsoft.com www.pltsoft.com. The licensed version of PLT Tools supports multiple simultaneous NONMEM runs, which can substantially facilitate throughput on multicore computers. The multiuser networked version of PLT Tools can distribute NONMEM jobs across multiple networked computers. Participants are encouraged to consider two introductory courses. The day before the workshop, Tuesday, April 13th, we will be offering a full day "Introduction to R" course. Participants who would like to brush up on NONMEM before starting the workshop on Wednesday are encouraged to attend the half-day "Introduction to NONMEM" course on Tuesday afternoon. Participants interested in additional training in PLT Tools can sign up for a half-day course devoted to PLT Tools we give on the afternoon of the last day (Saturday, April 17th). The course covers PLT Tools in greater detail, including analysis scripting and automatic report generation. Dennis and I hope to see you in April in San Francisco! Sincerely, Steven L. Shafer, MD Professor of Anesthesiology, Columbia University Adjunct Professor of Anesthesia, Stanford University Adjunct Professor of Biopharmaceutical Sciences, UCSF Editor-in-Chief, Anesthesia & Analgesia