Ms Beth Hillier BSc, MSc

• MSc (Distinction) in Medical Statistics, University of Leicester, 2022
• NIHR Pre-Doctoral Fellowship Award, 2021-23
• BSc (Hons) in Mathematics, University of Birmingham, 2019

Beth Hillier completed a BSc in Mathematics at the University of Birmingham in 2019. In her final year, she took a Medical Statistics module which served as a catalyst for her interest in a career in biostatistics. She further explored this interest through an internship at CRCTU, which allowed her to see the day-to-day work lives and tasks of clinical trial statisticians. Subsequently, she decided to read an MSc in Medical Statistics at the University of Leicester, graduating with a Distinction in 2022.

She was awarded an NIHR Pre-Doctoral Fellowship to fund her studies and to support her early-career professional development. Her MSc dissertation project focused on developing and validating predictive models for patient-reported outcomes using routinely collected primary care data from individuals recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes mellitus in Leicester.

Since completing her studies in 2022, Beth has been working as a medical statistician in the BESTEAM team, contributing to a wide range of applied and methodological projects amongst inter-disciplinary teams. Her work has included umbrella reviews assessing the quality of prediction models for pressure injury occurrence, an evaluation of the efficacy of oral HPV detection methods (such as oral rinse), and a cross-sectional review of commercial direct-to-consumer self-tests available in the UK market.

Her recent research involves evaluating whether the use of lactate testing, alongside standard vital signs assessment, can improve the identification of maternal sepsis in low- and middle-income countries.

Beth is also engaged in methodological research on how medical tests should be evaluated. Are researchers conducting appropriate studies and trials to answer the questions they set out to address? Her work focuses on issues of applicability, particularly on how these concerns relate to study phases in test evaluation research (from early-phase to late-phase clinical studies). She is also investigating how to determine adequate sample sizes for evaluating outcomes beyond diagnostic accuracy, including clinical and patient-centred outcomes.

Alongside her research, Beth contributes to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and is involved in the development and delivery of upcoming CPD courses.

Undergraduate:

• Medicine and Surgery MBChB

Postgraduate:

• Public Health MPH

Continuing Professional Development (CPD):

• Evaluating Medical Tests: How to assess whether a biomarker or diagnostic test is fit for purpose?
• Systematic Reviews and meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy

Research groups and centres

• Biostatistics, Evidence Synthesis, Test Evaluation and prediction Modelling (BESTEAM)
• Test and Prediction (TAP)