Introduction to biostatistics_day_1 (1).pptx

What is biostatistics, different between biostatistics and biometry, why biostatistics, epidemiology and biostatistics, clinical trials

1. BIOSTATISTICS Introduction

2. What is biostatistics ? Biostatistics is the application of statistics to biology and medicine. It is concerned with the assessment of observed variation in living organisms, particularly human beings. It seeks better insight into the life process, with focus on the cause, treatment, and prevention of disease. It uses the theories and methodology of statistics, but has created specialized methods of its own.

3. Biostatistics vs Biometry It is sometimes distinguished from the field of biometry based upon whether applications are in the health sciences - biostatistics or in broader biology - biometry eg agriculture, ecology /wildlife biology

4. Why Biostastistics ? The development of statistical inference in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries was motivated by problems in biology, and its growth stimulated by the subsequent explosion of research in science and technology and the advent of the electronic computer. Responding to challenges posed by large-scale biomedical research programs, biostatistics emerged as a vigorous distinct discipline. Its scope includes data collection and analysis pertaining to virtually all facets of the vast healthcare system.

5. Epidemiology and Biostatistics The study of health factors affecting populations, with emphasis on public health (/ medicine/divisions-diagnostics-and procedures/medicine/public-health ) issues, is the realm of epidemiology, a closely related field using the theories and methods of biostatistics.

6. Scope In the field of descriptive statistics, biostatistics contributes to the preparation of official records characterizing the health of the nation. As participant in the biomedical research process, it provides study design based on theories of statistical inference, primarily the classical Neyman -Pearson theory of hypothesis testing. Applying a wide range of standard techniques,it considers the two types of error in testing, determines required sample size for desired power, and assesses the statistical significance (/earth-and-environment/ecology- andenvironmentalism /environmental-studies/statistical-significance) of results.

7. Scope Its best-known specialized technique is the randomized clinical trial (RCT) for controlled experiments. For observational research the chief methods are cohort and case-control studies.

8. Clinical Trial EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH: THE RANDOMIZED CLINICAL TRIAL . A clinical trial is an experiment in which a selected group of patients is given a particular treatment (intervention), typically a drug, and followed over time to observe the outcome. In a randomized clinical trial, also called randomized controlled trial (both referred to as RCT), patients are assigned at random to one of two or more treatments to assess relative effectiveness. Individual differences among patients that may affect their response are assumed to be balanced out by the random assignment.

9. Cohort and Case-control studies OBSERVATIONAL RESEARCH: COHORT AND CASE-CONTROL STUDIES. The two main approaches to addressing questions for which experimentation is ethically not feasible or otherwise not practicable are the observational designs of cohort and case-control studies, the basic tools of epidemiology. They aim to discover or confirm an association between some exposure or risk factor and a disease, using specific criteria of statistical theory and methodology