Statistical medicine

Abstract

A large number of statistical tools are now used for medical decision in the core activities of diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. These tools provide undeniable help in improving medical outcomes. Prominent among them are uncertainty measurement by probability, medical indicators and indexes, reference ranges, and scoring systems. In addition are tools such as odds ratio, sensitivity, specificity and predictivities, area under the ROC curve, likelihood ratios, and cost-benefit analysis that are commonly applied in medical research but have implications for day-to-day clinical activities. These tools have so completely integrated into medical practice that statistical medicine by itself can stand alone as a medical specialty. Time has arrived to recognize statistical medicine as a medical specialty.

Personalized statistical medicine

“…We present here a new approach to medicine where diagnosis and prognosis assessments of a patient are based primarily on statistical assessment of the individual characteristics and call this personalized statistical medicine. This communication, an extension of our previous proposal to consider statistical medicine as a new medical speciality 3 , provides a new personalized perspective, explains the elements of personalized statistical medicine and discusses how this can be practiced for the benefit of the individual patients without incurring much cost.…”

Competency-based medical education and the McNamara fallacy: Assessing the important or making the assessed important?

“…These are now pervading so much that statistical medicine has been proposed as a medical specialty on the lines of laboratory medicine. [ 5 ] In the face of volatility of humans and their varying competencies, we do need objectivity as much as possible. Qualitative-quantitative debate is raised when we fail to develop appropriate measuring tools.…”