Page 9 - Recommendations-for-biostatisticians-in-managing-and-conducting-medical-research-consultations

1. Introduction

Biostatisticians or statisticians are one of the jobs with the highest demand in the
developed countries (Lovaglio, Cesarini, and Mercorio 2018). In clinical research, the role
of a biostatistician is deemed highly important for guiding a clinical researcher in the
medical field to use appropriate statistical techniques that will adequately analyze their
valuable data. Since biostatistician are data specialists, they are also required to have a
basic understanding of clinical medicine and epidemiology in order for them to be able to
perform accurate data evaluation in clinical research in order to interpret the findings
correctly.

Statistics and clinical medicine are two totally different fields of knowledge; therefore, a
biostatistician who has no prior knowledge of clinical medicine may encounter difficulties
when offering research consultation service for medical research. It is not common for a
biostatistician to have expertise in both areas (i.e. statistics and clinical medicine) since
either of the two professionals (i.e. biostatistician and medical practitioner) will take time
to acquire knowledge and to gain practice-related experience. It is therefore necessary for a
biostatistician to also gain relevant knowledge and practice-related skills in the medical
field in order to be better able to perform his/her role of a research consultant for clinical
research.

Although it seems invariably advantageous for a biostatistician to be also qualified as a
medical doctor; it is found that there are however still very few biostatisticians who are
also medically-qualified. Generally, the job of a biostatistician can be quite challenging,
however he/she will be facilitated to advance further in his/her career if he/she spends
some time to gain a sound understanding of the background of the biomedical science
which underpins the generation of data and hypotheses of the study (Pocock 1995).

This e-book/book describes the essential consulting skills expected of a biostatistician
for conducting a research consultation session. The discussion will be followed by a
biostatistician's initial evaluation of the research proposal and then proceed with an
outline of several useful tools that are recommended for a biostatistician to use for
enhancing their grasp of the subject matter during the research consultation. Some helpful
tips on how to optimize the delivery of biostatistical consultation were also discussed.
Finally, the author wraps up this topic by offering a list of very useful tips for a
biostatistician to enhance their professional competency as a research consultant for
medical research. All in all, the present e-book/book can benefit both the junior
biostatistician starting out as well as the experienced biostatistician who is seeking to
improve their consultation skills.