Employee Stories

A Day in the Life of an Analyst

Hannah Luedke is a Analyst in our London office and joined the company in 2020.

What did you do before joining Costello Medical?

I graduated from Imperial College London with a Master’s in Drug Discovery and Development, where I focused on identifying new drug targets to find novel treatments for snakebites. Prior to this, I gained a degree in Biochemistry from the University of East Anglia.

What do you like best about your role as Analyst at Costello Medical?

There are a few key things I love about my role. For example, I am always learning about different disease areas and new treatments. I have always enjoyed learning new things and, in order to continue this, I am currently pursuing a Postgraduate Certificate in Health Economics. This has been funded and supported by the company.

I have also really enjoyed how much I’ve developed my skills and knowledge. This is due to a combination of thorough training, support from my colleagues and gaining more hands-on experience on our projects.

Finally, I have loved using some of my pre-existing skills in this role. For example, I am a German native speaker and have been able to use my language skills in different projects when working with German-speaking clinicians. Similarly, if there are new things I am specifically interested in and keen to learn about, my line manager does their best to make sure I gain this experience. This has included working on specific project types I am interested in or experiencing cross-divisional work.

How would you describe a typical day in the life of an Analyst at Costello Medical?

9:00am

I arrive at the office to a number of cheerful greetings. My first priority is to look through my emails. Once I’ve replied to any client or internal emails, I will create a to-do list for the day. We are provided with a lot of freedom in how we structure our day.

Today I begin by addressing comments from a client on the training slides that I have produced, which detail the results from a recent clinical trial. The slides will be used by the pharmaceutical company’s internal sales team to help them understand how their drug has performed during the trial. The opportunity to have direct contact with clients soon after I joined Costello Medical has been something I have really enjoyed as it allows me to see and understand how my work is used.

9:30am

I have a meeting with a Consultant to coordinate the work of other Analysts and Interns on the systematic literature review we are working on. It is crucial that the whole project team is aligned on the overall strategy for the review to ensure that we are consistent in how we approach it and produce an accurate and thorough report. Taking a key role in this project is allowing me to develop my planning and leadership skills.

10:00am

I turn my attention to an economic model that we are developing for a client. The model intends to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of the pharmaceutical company’s new treatment for patients with alcohol dependency. I had no experience of economic modelling prior to joining Costello Medical but quickly received extensive training in this area and I have since gained lots of on-the-job experience. It was this experience that encouraged me to apply for the postgraduate training course in Health Economics. There is never any shortage of opportunity to take on responsibility and to try out different projects in various disease areas.

12:30pm

After a few hours of working on the model I head to the communal area for lunch and to catch up after the weekend. I’ll then update my to-do list with whatever feedback and timeline changes have occurred since the morning and get started with some more project work.

3:00pm

Early afternoon seems to be a prime time for internal meetings and teleconferences with clients. Today I am speaking with a client and the team to wrap-up a project. It is satisfying to receive her positive feedback and we feed this into our project appraisal.

4:00pm

For the rest of the afternoon, I complete some background reading for a project that I am about to begin in a new disease area. I will be working on an advisory board for an upcoming conference, which involves supporting the client to devise the agenda before creating the slides that will be presented.

6:00pm

I email a couple of project managers to update them on the work that I have done that day before leaving for netball practice with some of my colleagues.