Postgraduate School of Medical Statistics and Biometry

Integrated Educational Objectives (i.e., Common Core)
The trainee must have acquired skills in medical statistics, hygiene, forensic medicine, occupational medicine, epidemiology, business organization, demography, work and organizational psychology, and labor law.
The common training objective for the disciplines in the class is aimed at acquiring knowledge of the classification and characterization of different population groups, their general and work-related organization, and lifestyles, taking into account the increasingly important psychological implications.
This is all aimed at performing adequate statistical assessments, analyzing hygiene, forensic, occupational, and risk issues, determining suitability, assessing pathologies and disabilities, and applying all preventive criteria as required by current and evolving legislation.

Basic Educational Objectives
- Acquiring the basic methodological tools in health statistics and epidemiology necessary to design and conduct biomedical studies;
- Acquisition of knowledge on the purposes of healthcare organization and planning, and on the principles of bioethics;
- The use of methods to communicate scientific findings within the community.

Educational objectives of the School typology
- Ability to plan, organize, conduct, analyze, and interpret scientific research in the clinical field (clinical trials, validation of diagnostic methods, etc.);
- Ability to plan, organize, conduct, analyze, and interpret population studies, descriptive and analytical epidemiological investigations to identify risk and/or causal factors for major diseases;
- Ability to plan, organize, conduct, analyze, and interpret studies evaluating the effectiveness, efficiency, and costs of curative, rehabilitative, and preventive healthcare interventions;
- Know and be able to correctly apply the main theories of univariate and multivariate statistical analysis, as well as the properties and application areas of general and generalized linear models, univariate and multivariate, and nonlinear models, through the acquisition of skills in the use of statistical software and packages;
- Know and be able to correctly apply survival analysis and structural models;
- Master and competently use methods for mapping pathologies in the region (mortality, prevalence, incidence, etc.);
- Understand the structure of healthcare information flows and master and competently use healthcare and bibliographic databases.

Similar or complementary objectives are:
- Acquire the ability to interact with specialists from other disciplines and with other specialists in the fields of epidemiology, intervention evaluation, clinical guideline validation, disease risk factor identification, health economics, and bioengineering.
- Understand operations research and linear programming techniques.
- Understand the principles of mathematical logic, numerical analysis techniques, and fundamental econometric models.
- Understand the regulations governing the processing of personal and sensitive data for scientific purposes.
- Understand the social, environmental, and organizational issues associated with healthcare intervention planning in developing countries.


Mandatory professional development activities to achieve the following educational objectives:
Personally and independently performed
- the complete statistical analysis of at least two clinical or epidemiological investigations;
- the drafting of at least two clinical, epidemiological, or healthcare organization research protocols and conducted the related feasibility study;
- the monitoring of healthcare services or the follow-up of hospital or outpatient patients for at least one year;
- the drafting of at least two scientific articles or presentations at national or international conferences, with publication of the proceedings, in the field of clinical, epidemiological, or healthcare organization research.
Have performed the following activities:
- the organization, implementation, or management of a healthcare information system;
- a program for evaluating the quality of diagnostic assessment or screening methods;
Have completed at least four of the following types of activities within the National Health Service (SSR):
- Attendance for at least four months at a health data processing institute or center, using data management and statistical analysis software;
- Attendance for at least four months at an epidemiological observatory or a statistical-epidemiological service of a Region, Local Health Authority, or IRCCS, using data management and statistical analysis software; or alternatively:
- Attendance for at least four months at facilities where disease registries have been activated (e.g., tumors, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, cystic fibrosis) using data management and statistical analysis software;
- Attendance for at least four months at facilities where health management and economic evaluation of healthcare services are carried out, using data management and statistical analysis software;
- Attendance for at least four months at a veterinary medicine epidemiological observatory or a zooprophylactic institute, using data management and statistical analysis software;
- Attendance at a national or regional drug observatory for at least four months, using data management and statistical analysis software.
Attendance at at least 10 ethics committee meetings, following the procedures for issuing opinions from the preliminary stage.
The trainee may apply for the diploma after completing the professional development activities.
As part of the training program, the trainee must learn the scientific foundations of the School's program in order to achieve full maturity and professional competence. This includes adequate ability to interpret scientific innovations and critical thinking that allows them to consciously manage both care and their own development. This may include participation in meetings, conferences, the production of scientific publications, and periods of attendance at qualified Italian and foreign institutions useful for their training.