SRTR biostatisticians are using data to help transplant communities
One word strikes fear into the hearts of many – math.
Chronic Disease Research Group (CDRG) Biostatistician Yoon Son Ahn, MS.
Biostatistician Yoon Son Ahn, MS, encourages those interested in the field, “Do not be afraid of math. You have to take several math classes, but it’s not that hard compared to other math-driven courses or master’s programs.”
Ahn is one of many biostatisticians working within the Chronic Disease Research Group (CDRG), a division of the Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (HHRI). Ahn joins her former graduate cohort turned coworkers, Biostatistician Maria Masotti, PhD, and Biostatistician Grace Lyden, PhD.
Dr. Lyden, Dr. Masotti, and Ahn are biostatisticians working with the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) to solve complex and life-impacting problems.
Dr. Lyden breaks it down: “Our group helps to design and evaluate organ allocation policy in the United States, which is pretty amazing. We also publish transplant program evaluations, create online tools for patient-decision making in transplant, and write research papers.”
CDRG currently holds the federal SRTR contract, which supports the transplant community. Whoever holds the SRTR contract is responsible for gathering and providing statistical and analytic support to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN). The OPTN is a national public-private partnership linking all professionals in the U.S. donation and transplantation system. Its overarching goal is to improve the U.S. organ transplantation system to increase efficiency, optimization, and opportunities.
Statistics or Biostatistics?
Most people have heard of statistics and are unknowingly inundated with them every day ̶ from reading about the economy, marketing metrics, or analyzing the success or failure of content on Netflix. What people might not know is the subset within statistics: biostatistics.
According to The Life Sciences Magazine, “Biostatistics is a subset of statistics that focuses on analyzing data related to biology, medicine, and public health, while statistics applies to a broader range of fields, including business, engineering, and social sciences.”
Dr. Masotti drills down further. “[Biostatistics] tends to be more focused on the actual data and problem. Sometimes statistics can be sort of a theoretical exercise.”
Maria Masotti, PhD, and Grace Lyden, PhD, posing for a photo at the Joint Statistical Meeting (JMS) in Toronto, Canada in 2023. The JMS is the largest gathering of biostatisticians in the world.
How biostatistics translates into making data-driven decisions and saving lives
For Ahn, she is responding to questions from the transplant community, ranging from doctors to patients to researchers. These questions may involve topics such as estimating a patient’s survival after transplantation or estimating survival rates in general. She answers them by coding and interpreting the results.
Coding in simple terms is “writing instructions for computers and other hardware. The computer is then able to read the instructions (called ‘programs’) and do what you have asked it to do. Computer language is different from human language. A human needs to learn ‘computer language’ (commonly known as programming languages) to write programs that the computer can understand. Some ‘computer languages’ include Python, Java, C, C++, and JavaScript.”
In addition to their work with SRTR, Ahn, Dr. Masotti, and Dr. Lyden also support the OPTN committees.
“These committees develop policies to enhance patients’ quality of life, enhance the technology, and the techniques [used] to improve a patient’s life,” said Ahn.
For Dr. Masotti, no day is the same.
“So, we’re the data analytic and statistical hub within the OPTN, so we kind of are the guardians of the data and the statistics that generate our datasets, our reports, different public-facing tools and things like that to support the community, whether it is doctors or patients or advocates or researchers. A lot of our work is supported by that federal contract for developing or refining those tools. I work closely with experts in the field, clinicians, doctors, and such, helping them answer questions with the overarching goal of moving the policy forward in terms of making transplantation more efficient and equitable.”
Ahn, Dr. Masotti, and Dr. Lyden have one thing in common in their day-to-day work life-coding.
“The coding that I’m doing is I use data, I pull that out of our database, and I’m applying statistical models to answer questions like, ‘Is this group of people getting transplants at a rate that’s equitable to this other group?’ That could be gender or race, so looking for equity or inequity in the system, what’s the rate of the mortality for people who are waiting for a heart or a liver, [those] kinds of questions,” said Dr. Masotti.
For Dr. Lyden, her work requires juggling multiple projects at once.
“I’m usually working on a few projects at the same time and either planning an analysis, preparing code to run the analysis, or writing up results and presenting them. Right now, I’m working on a statistical model that will be used in our simulations of liver allocation, and I’m also writing a paper on a new predictive model for survival without [a] heart transplant, which could be used to rank-order heart candidates in the future.”
Biostatistician Grace Lyden, PhD, speaking at the American Society of Transplantation’s Cutting Edge of Transplantation Conference in 2025.
Improving patient care and outcomes
At the end of the day, how does this work help the patients?
“We’re working to improve patient care through research [and education]. So, in terms of educating the patient, it’s a very complex process. From finding out that you are in organ failure, to getting on the list, [receiving a transplant], and then the [aftercare]. It’s quite a complex network to navigate, so I do think we are a bit involved in using the data to educate patients and their advocates about what’s the right sort of decision-making at each of those steps,” said Dr. Masotti.
Dr. Lyden sees the big picture. “I like to think that our work will lead to better patient outcomes by improving transplant policy and creating a more equitable and transparent system overall. Our web tools can also help patients feel more informed about their options and allow them to compare transplant centers.”