A robust medical research hub runs on biostatistics, which is the application of statistical methods to biological, health, and medical research.
“Biostatistics is the subfield of statistics where we create analyses, inferences, judgments, or make decisions based on biomedical data,” according to Jonathan Gelfond, MD, PhD. He’s an associate professor and chief of biostatistics in the Department of Population Health Sciences within the Long School of Medicine at UT Health San Antonio.
Biostatisticians design medical studies, determine appropriate sample sizes, and account for confounding variables. They also collect and analyze biomedical data, which they gather from an expanding array of sources.
“Biomedical data can come from a doctor who's collecting data in the electronic health record. It can come from experiments in the lab with mice, and it can come from clinical trials,” Gelfond said. “We also get data from epidemiological studies, kind of large populations where we're measuring, like the number of cases of COVID each month.”
Biostatisticians also interpret the results of research studies. “One of the classic examples is a randomized trial where we want to know if the drugs are working or not,” Gelfond explained. “Biostatistics takes that raw data from the trial and turns it into a quantity that we can use to make an actionable, objective decision.”
Biostatisticians have come under increased scrutiny in recent years, as the pandemic called them into service in a variety of ways. Understanding COVID and the virus that causes it, as well as developing treatments and vaccines, required the gathering and interpretation of reams of data. Gelfond said he and his colleagues are intentional about doing their work in a way that stands up to examination.
“You have to start with a good, rigorous methodology, being a devil's advocate for what could go wrong. What assumptions are we making? It's finding our own assumptions, and sort of questioning our own underlying beliefs that might or might not be wrong, and testing those assumptions that gives us credibility,” Gelfond said.
It's that statistical rigor that ensures the treatments doctors prescribe are backed by science.
Recent research in which Gelfond contributed his expertise includes a study on an innovative approach to improving swallowing in people with Parkinson’s disease, and a collaboration with Dr. Jannine Cody at the UT Health San Antonio Chromosome 18 Clinical Research Center to gather a rare dataset for the Kids First pediatric research initiative.
Science & Medicine is a collaboration between TPR and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio that explores how scientific discovery in San Antonio advances the way medicine is practiced everywhere.
