What is biostatistics and Who is Biostatisticians?

“You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.”

— Daniel Keys Moran

Making sense of all the data relating to living organisms and transforming them into knowledge by using quantitative skills are the work of biostatisticians.

The tools of the biostatistics help to find answers for pressing research questions in biology, medicine, and public health.  They may answer questions like

  • How a new drug works?
  • What causes cancer?
  • What is the reason for many diseases?
  • How long could a person survive with a particular disease?

So, what is biostatistics and its Applications?

Biostatistics is the development and application of statistical models and theories of inferential, probability and computing and mathematics responsible for interpreting the scientific data generated in the health sciences. Statistical methods encompass designs of a wide range of biological experiments.  With the onset of pharmaceutical studies and clinical trials, it has developed in the directions of clinical trial methodology, general linear models of various types, survival analysis, longitudinal models, and health outcome research. It infers the experimental data in the health sphere to understand countless pressing and crucial health and other development issues like:

Application of biostatistics

Medicine
Public Health/Health economics and policy
Large Data
Future
Chronic diseases such as DiabetesAIDSCancerNeurological conditionsPalliative care   Environmental health The relationship between genetics & the environmentSmoking cessationPreventionutilization   Medicare data Brain imaging Genomics Cost pattern identification Health data mining Illness behavioral profiles

The Biostatisticians in the field of Medical Research:

Biostatisticians (PhD or post-graduate specialty in statistics or Medical/health or Epidemiology) are in high demand due to their various responsibilities in scientific data. They also collaborate with informatics, experts, scientists, and researchers for various functions. They consider the variables in subjects like patients, communities, or population to understand them and also make sense of different sources of variation. It is to achieve their ultimate goal of solving problems in public health by disentangling the received data and make valid inferences. It is the reason they are in demand in government agencies and legislative offices.  Their research is used often to influence changes at the policy-making levels.

The responsibilities of Biostatisticians:

  • To determine the ways to utilize the vast information and statistics obtained through various sources like genomics, clinical trials, experimental studies and observational and longitudinal studies for public health.
  • Being specialists of data evaluation, they take complex and mathematical findings of clinical trials and research related data.  They then translate them into variable information to make public health decisions.
  • Biostatisticians are required to develop statistical methods for the following:
  • Clinical trials to study and evaluate treatments, screening and prevention methods in population (e.g. Evaluating protocol in terms of study rationale, study objectives, study design, sample size calculation, statistical analysis of primary endpoints, statistical analysis of secondary endpoints, treatment of missing data, informed consent, insurance issues, economic issues)
  • Epidemiological studies of the origins of disease in humans
  • Spatial studies of the geographical distribution of disease and risk factors
  • Genomics which is the study of the biological activity of genes as they relate to disease and treatments
  • Human genetics a study of the genetic differences among diseases and disease states

Biostatistics is responsible for public health all over the world with data collection and its interpretation by various ways.