Eleanor Pullenayegum

Dr. Eleanor Pullenayegum is a biostatistician whose primary work focuses on developing methodology for longitudinal data and health economics. She trained at the University of Cambridge (BA and MA in mathematics), the University of Toronto (PhD in Biostatistics with Dr. Andrew Willan), and the University of Waterloo (postdoctoral fellowship with Dr Richard Cook).

She worked as a consulting biostatistician at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge before coming to Toronto to pursue her PhD. Before assuming her current position at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), she was on faculty at McMaster in the Department of Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics.

Research

Many studies follow patients over time and obtain measures of patients’ health and functioning as part of their usual care. This data is increasingly available for research. The challenge, however, is that patients often visit more frequently when they are unwell – ignoring this when analysing the data leads to overestimating the burden of disease. Dr. Pullenayegum develops methods to mitigate this bias.

When decision makers decide which treatments should be publicly reimbursed, they consider both the cost and the quality-adjusted life years attributable to the new treatment. Uncertainty in estimates of cost and quality-adjusted life years is crucial to evidence-informed decision making; however, she recently showed that it is substantially underestimated. Her team is developing methods both to characterize the uncertainty correctly and to reduce the extent of uncertainty.

Education

• 2002–2005: PhD (Biostatistics), Department of Public Health Sciences (now Dalla Lana School of Public Health), University of Toronto
• 1999–2000: Cambridge Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics. Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge
• 1996–1999: BA (Hons) Mathematics. Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge

Experience

• 2016–Present: Senior Scientist, Child Health Evaluative Sciences, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto ON
• 2013–2016: Scientist, Child Health Evaluative Sciences, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto ON
• 2013–Present: Associate Professor, Division of Biostatistics, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto ON
• 2013–Present: Associate Professor, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, Toronto ON
• 2013–2016: Associate Professor (part-time), Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton ON
• 2012–2013: Associate Professor Biostatistician, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton ON
  Father Sean O’Sullivan Research Centre St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, ON
• 2007–2013: Assistant Professor Biostatistician, Department of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Hamilton ON, Father Sean O’Sullivan Research Centre St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, ON
• 2006: Postdoctoral Fellow (supervisor: Dr. R.J. Cook), Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, University of Waterloo, Waterloo ON
• 2000–2002: Research Assistant, Centre for Applied Medical Statistics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge UK

1. Liu K*, Saarela O, Feldman BM, Pullenayegum E. Estimation of causal effects with repeatedly measured outcomes in a Bayesian framework. Stat Methods Med Res. 2020 Jan 29:962280219900362. [Epub ahead of print]
2. Shams S*, Pullenayegum EM. Reducing Uncertainty in EQ-5D Value Sets: The Role of Spatial Correlation. Medical Decision Making. 2019 Feb; 39(2):91-99.  Epub 2019 Jan 24. PubMed
3. Pullenayegum EM, Chan KKW*, Xie F. Quantifying Parameter Uncertainty in EQ-5D- 3L Value Sets and Its Impact on Studies That Use the EQ-5D-3L to Measure Health Utility: A Bayesian Approach. Medical Decision Making. 2016; 36(2): 223-233. Epub date: July 2 2015. pii: 0272989X15591966.
4. Pullenayegum EM. Multiple outputation for the analysis of longitudinal data subject to irregular observation. Statistics in Medicine. 2016; 35(11); 1800-18. Epub date: 2015 Dec 13.
5. Pullenayegum EM. Multiple outputation for the analysis of longitudinal data subject to irregular observation. Statistics in Medicine. 2016; 35(11); 1800-18. Epub date: 2015 Dec 13.