Testimonials

What people are saying about SABER and its impact on clinical studies: 


"SABER has been vital to the success of our Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease Research. The staff - particularly Cathie Spino and Cathy Scott - are consummate professionals, both in their expert knowlege and remarkable ability to "make things happen". Our work requires a complex set of database, tracking and statistical support to manage multiple overlapping multi-disciplinary studies. SABER has handled this challenge with ease and is always a pleasure to work with. We are gearing up to renew this Center, and view the continued involvement of SABER as a major strength of our application!"

William Dauer, M.D.
Elinor Levine Professor of Neurology
Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology
Director, Movement Disorders Group & Udall Center of Excellence
for Parkinson's Disease Research
University of Michigan Medical School

"Dr. Cathie Spino and her team at SABER have been our partners in our project since before it launched. They provided sage guidance during its development, excellent management of its day-to-day operations, and tremendous ongoing data and statistical expertise as we generate research products. Our project has evolved considerably since it began and has created plenty of surprises and urgent deadlines. The team at SABER has always been adaptable, resilient, and extremely capable in dealing with these challenges. They have never failed to exceed my expectations. They are responsive, collegial, and extremely pleasant to work with. Our project would not have succeeded without them."

Rex Edwards
Vice President
PFF Patient Registry
Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation

"Cathie and her DCC colleagues have been extremely effective in our network collaboration with their operational expertise and support of the specimen biorepository efforts and resulting ancillary studies. More than 115,000 biospecimens, including tissue, urine, whole blood, plasma and serum, have been collected from probands and parents or siblings in our studies. The DCC has developed procedures to ensure appropriate processing, shipping and tracking of these valuable resources so that investigators can investigate new biomarkers and pathways from this well-characterized population. The DCC serves as a liaison between the NIDDK Biorepositories at Fisher and Rutgers and the clinical sites. It also provides clinical study data, appropriately modified to be compliant with HIPAA standards, to investigators so that they have all of the information needed to correlate specialized laboratory measurements with the clinical data. In addition, Cathie and her team have provided their statistical expertise on analyses of primary and ancillary studies. I have worked with Cathie and her colleagues on an Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Working Group analysis that has resulted in a DDW abstract and subsequent manuscript. She seeks to understand the science, so that she can guide investigators on the appropriate statistical methods to answer the most pressing questions."

Philip Rosenthal, MD
Professor of Pediatrics and Surgery
Medical Director, Pediatric Liver Transplant Program
Director, Pediatric Hepatology
University of California - San Francisco

"As a site PI of the Pelvic Floor Disorders Network (PFDN), I have worked with you and your colleagues since the inception of the PFDN. I have also had the opportunity to work with several other data coordinating centers on other projects over the years and therefore can unequivocally state that University of Michigan is in a league far above that of the others, for the following reasons:

  • The breadth of statistical and study design knowledge within your organization is wide. You have expertise in various types of statistical techniques important for our network, ranging from data imputation methods necessary for long-term follow-up to finer details of randomization and stratification.
  • The project managers are well versed in all aspects of recruitment, consent, and follow-up and provide thoughtful and important feedback to investigators and coordinators.
  • Site visits are extremely helpful and respectful. These are always conducted with a sense of team support, rather than negative criticism and always result in enhancing the quality of our work.
  • The DCC functions as a team with the Steering Committee and other site personnel, rather than as a dictatorship. This promotes an honest give and take of ideas and promotes respect within the group for all participants in the group.
  • The atmosphere created is one in which study coordinators at the sites feel supported and assisted.
  • The DCC fully supports planning studies with statistical expertise available on every conference call and unlimited conference calls to achieve our goals. Coordination of calls is done very well and reminders are timely and helpful.
  • The DCC supports a highly functioning website containing all of the tools investigators need to make studies successful.
  • The DCC is open to change and does not use the same "cookie cutter" approach for every study. For example, depending on the type of study and population, outcome instruments may be developed for telephone, paper, or web administration.
  • The DCC statisticians carefully check and recheck every analysis, abstract and publication, ensuring that high-quality results are presented accurately to the medical world. From a personal point of view, under your excellent leadership, the DCC creates an environment that makes being in the PFDN not only academically satisfying, but also rewarding and fun."

Ingrid Nygaard, MD, 
Professor, Obstetrics and Gynecology
University of Utah