Medical statisticians use statistical calculations to determine probabilities in health-related endeavors, such as drug interaction risks and disease pandemics. They work in various settings, including laboratories, clinics, and pharmaceutical companies, and transform medical data into useful information. They may also serve as consultants and make suggestions for improving care. Project-based assignments are usually short-term, and statisticians generally work within defined subfields of related information.
A medical statistician is primarily concerned with statistical calculation and the determination of probabilities for a number of different health-related endeavors. A person in this role helps researchers understand drug interaction risks or gradations in ingredient ratios, and can also help generate numbers to represent disease pandemics, access to health services, and other demographic information. There are many job opportunities in medicine for people with training in theoretical statistics, as most medical research depends at least in part on the work of dedicated statisticians. No matter the location though, all medical statistics jobs involve similar tasks. The main ones are research, data analysis and mathematical manipulation and presentation of health facts.
The most important task of any medical statistician is to transform medical data into useful information that can shape some aspect of health care. Medical statistics, or “biostatistics” as they are sometimes called, are a means of quantifying and making sense of vast data sets. Statisticians work in many different locations, from laboratories and clinics to pharmaceutical companies, non-profit groups and third-party offices. The data they work with may be very different, but what they do with it is generally similar in all respects, at least at a basic level.
Merging and formulating data is often the backbone of the statistician’s work. A medical statistician is, in many ways, a mathematician with specialized training in medical research. He or she first collects the results of experiments, patient reactions, or any number of clinical trials. Numbers must be analyzed, quantified on a scale that accounts for any variables, and then distributed in some meaningful way. Statisticians can often turn raw data into percentages, success rates, and future projections that scientists, clinicians, and lab technicians can use in a variety of settings.
A medical statistician may also serve as a consultant to a medical group or corporation. Statisticians are generally not clinically trained, but they often need to understand the dimensions and relevance of the materials they are working with. They often use their studies to make suggestions on how to achieve better results or how to improve certain aspects of care, for example.
Applied statistics specialists are usually permanent employees, although they may also undertake consultancy work. Project-based assignments are usually designed to be short-term, often ending in a set report that can be used for some discrete project. Experienced statisticians often make a good living jumping from client to client.
In most cases, each project should fall within the medical statistician’s basic line of expertise. While the science and process behind the work is largely consistent from one setting to the next, the actual work generally requires some degree of knowledge and understanding. Statisticians generally work only within defined subfields of related information.
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