Biostatistica

The general objective of the course is to develop in the student the critical ability to evaluate the
scientific evidence in support of biomedicine for prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation
with reference to the integration of laboratory tests for diagnosis, practical efficacy of the therapy,
and of prognostic indicators.
In the student's training process, the acquisition of this ability contributes, from an ethical and
deontological perspective, to the construction of a mental habitus capable of integrating the
knowledge produced by good biomedical and clinical research into the cultural and professional
sphere. A habit that is now considered necessary for all professions related to basic and applied
biomedical research together with the processes of health technology assessment (HTA).
As specific objectives, the course aims to develop the knowledge and skills related to:
i)statistical methods that make it possible to describe and evaluate the different sources of
variability;
ii)diagnostic tests and related measures of reliability and diagnostic relevance;
iii)basic principles of planning observational studies, interpretation of disease occurrence measures
and the association between risk factors and disease occurrence;
iv)the relationships between statistics and the foundations of the inductive / deductive scientific
method for empirical research, with reference to the planning of observation and experimental
studies and methods of statistical inference;
v)basic principles of ethics and the relationship with the methodology of biomedical research with
specific reference to experimental studies of therapeutic efficacy.

The course aims to provide the methodological tools needed to learn, apply and evaluate, through
critical analysis of the medical literature:
-the concepts of reliability, accuracy and precision, repeatability and reproducibility of the
measures;
-the usefulness of diagnostic tests and prognostic indexes;
-measures of disease occurrence and association with risk/benefit factors in epidemiology/clinical
research;
-the identification of sources of imprecision and inaccuracy in epidemiological / clinical studies;
-the difference between studies based on observation and experimentation together with the main
study designs in epidemiology / clinical research for the assessment of causal relationships, with
reflection on the ethical aspects of biomedical research
-the effectiveness of therapies, rehabilitation practices, prevention programs, reported by
observational and experimental studies.