Medical statistics

"Statistics in Medicine" redirects here. For the journal, see Statistics in Medicine (journal).

Medical statistics deals with applications of statistics to medicine and the health sciences, including epidemiology, public health, forensic medicine, and clinical research. Medical statistics has been a recognized branch of statistics in the UK for more than 40 years but the term does not appear to have come into general use in North America, where the wider term 'biostatistics' is more commonly used. However, "biostatistics" more commonly connotes all applications of statistics to biology.

Pharmaceutical statistics

Pharmaceutical statistics is the application of statistics to matters concerning the pharmaceutical industry. This can be from issues of design of experiments, to analysis of drug trials, to issues of commercialization of a medicine.

There are many professional bodies concerned with this field including:

• European Federation of Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry (EFSPI)
• Statisticians In The Pharmaceutical Industry (PSI)

There are also journals including:

• Statistics in Medicine
• Pharmaceutical Statistics

Basic concepts

For describing situations

• Incidence (epidemiology) vs. Prevalence vs. Cumulative incidence
• Transmission rate vs. Force of infection
• Mortality rate vs. Standardized mortality ratio vs. Age-standardized mortality rate
• Pandemic vs. Epidemic vs. Endemic vs. Syndemic
• Serial interval vs. Incubation period
• Cancer cluster
• Sexual network
• Years of potential life lost
• Maternal mortality rate
• Perinatal mortality rate
• Low Birth weight ratio

For assessing the effectiveness of an intervention

• Absolute risk reduction
• Control event rate
• Experimental event rate
• Number needed to harm
• Number needed to treat
• Odds ratio
• Relative risk reduction
• Relative risk
• Relative survival

Statistical Tests

• Probability
• Student's t-test
• Chi-squared test

Related statistical theory

• Survival analysis
• Proportional hazards models

See also

• Herd immunity
• Rare disease

Further reading

• Altman, D.G. (1991), Practical Statistics for Medical Research, CRC Press, ISBN 978-0-412-27630-9 
• Armitage, P.; Berry, G.; Matthews, J.N.S. (2002), Statistical Methods in Medical Research, Blackwell, ISBN 978-0-632-05257-8 
• Bland, J. Martin (2000), An Introduction to Medical Statistics (3rd ed.), Oxford: OUP, ISBN 978-0-19-263269-2 
• Kirkwood, B.R.; Sterne, J.A.C. (2003), Essential Medical Statistics (2nd ed.), Blackwell, ISBN 978-0-86542-871-3 
• Petrie, Aviva; Sabin, Caroline (2005), Medical Statistics at a Glance (2nd ed.), WileyBlackwell, ISBN 978-1-4051-2780-6 

External links

• Health-EU Portal EU health statistics