“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
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:
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 behavioural profiles |
Biostatisticians ( PhD or post-graduate speciality 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.
Biostatistics is responsible for public health all over the world with data collection and its interpretation by various ways.
Many students studying medicine find it unnecessary in their initial years of study to learn statistics. But the reality is many profound doctors feel the need biostatistics since in the time of their study it was not in the medical study curriculum. The doctors need to study biostatistics not only for researchers but also to enhance their reading capability of medical literature. Only with the introduction of evidence-based medicines as a cornerstone for medical management, biostatistics came into vital prevalence.
All systematic researches carried out on human beings to generate data for discovering or verifying the pharmacological, clinical or adverse effects with the objective of determining efficacy and safety of the new drug are called clinical researches. They bring in the following benefits to humankind:
Guidelines of evidence-based medicine are squarely depended on meta-analysis. It is, in turn, is based on many randomized controlled clinical types of research. Only this will provide rock-solid evidence to help doctors in making decisions on the best management options for patients. A firm understanding of statistical methods only will facilitate the understanding of the randomized clinical research methods and results. Hence biostatistics plays an important role in evidence-based medicine, which is the base for doctors to recommend treatments for patients now.
Biostatistician support is essential for the hypothesis of clinical researches based on the observed data and the theoretical statistical model for evidence-based medicine and treatments.
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