CRPV205 Design and Interpretation of Clinical Trials, Introduction to Biostatistics

Design and interpretation of clinical trials and the role of biostatistics are critical components in the development and approval of new drugs. Clinical trials are designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of a new drug in a controlled environment, and biostatistics plays a vital role in the design, conduct, and interpretation of these trials. This course provides the foundation for biostatistics and interpretation of research findings. The course covers the tools for the collection, analysis, and presentation of population health data. The course begins with exploratory analysis (data summaries, visualization), probability distributions and progresses to confidence intervals and hypothesis testing of sample means and proportions. Central to these inferential reasoning skills the course also focuses on the interpretation of research findings. Finally the course introduces key epidemiological study designs and various sampling techniques.

Learning Points:

• Basics of Biostatistics (Descriptive Statistics, Mean, Median, Standard Deviation Normal Distribution, and Confidence Intervals)
• Visual Interpretation of Data (Histograms, Box Plots, Charts)
• Null Hypothesis/Statistical Testing (Student t-test)
• Type I and Type II errors, Power
• Outcomes and Analysis
• Types and Designs of Clinical Studies
• Sampling, Randomization and Masking