Cancer Biostatistics Center
About Us
Services
The Biostatistics Shared Resource team work with Cancer Center investigators to:
- Define objectives and endpoints
- Analyze pilot data
- Select an appropriate design
- Devise a blinding and randomization scheme
- Plan interim analyses
- Determine the early stopping rules
- Compute an adequate sample size with concern for the clinical as well as statistical significance
- Estimate the time required to accrue the total patient population
- Specify the statistical methods
- Prepare statistical sections of the grant and protocol applications
- Design relational database
Objectives
The members of the Biostatistics Shared Resource endeavor to:
- Provide consultative services for Cancer Center investigators in the statistical design, conduct, and analysis of studies
- Collaborate in funded research efforts initiated by Cancer Center laboratory and clinical investigators, providing statistical expertise in the study design, power and sample size analysis, data analysis, interpretation of results, and the writing of manuscripts
- Provide relational database design, data tracking, forms, queries, and reports for the investigator-initiated clinical trials database or laboratory study database
- Develop and evaluate statistical methods for experimental design and data analysis
- Work with the Cancer Center Clinical Trials Shared Resource in the development of a new research project database, to maintain data quality control and to ensure timely data capture
- Train VICC members in the research design and data analysis through seminars, short statistical workshops, or individual sessions on statistical methods
Charges
There is no charge-back for using the Biostatistics Shared Resource since biostatistical input is crucial to most clinical and laboratory studies. However, the Cancer Center requires that at least one of the resource staff be listed as co-investigator on the research grant applications that need support from the Biostatistics Shared Resource.
Equipment and Tools
Twenty Intel Processor Workstations
- Ranging from quad core to single core Xeon to PIII Processors
- 2 to 24 gigabyte of RAM per workstation Windows 2000, XP, Mac and Linux OS over 18 terabytes of file space
- Complete backup of critical data performed nightly
Windows 2003 & 2008 Servers
- Two dedicated servers
- 2 terabytes of storage space dedicated directly for research
- Research backed up and verified daily
Software Tools
- R, MATLAB, S-PLUS, SAS, SPSS, STATA, Resampling Stats, EGRET, EPICURE, CART, MARS, TREE-NET, nQuery, EaSt, PASS and other statistical applications
- MS Visual Studio .Net, Digital Fortran, Visual Basic
- MS Access 2007 and MySQL for Relational Database Projects
Input / Output Devices
- Hewlett Packard Color Laser Printer for high-quality color output
- Konica Minolta C320 & HP Network Laser Printer for high output print jobs
- 3 HP Laser Printers
- Konica Minolta C320 & HP Scanjet for photograph high-resolution scans with automatic document feeder and OCR capabilities
- Brother MFC document scanner/ fax/ laser copy
Media and Connectivity
- Zip (100/250MB) formats
- CD, CD-R, CD-RW (read and write)
- DVD, DVD-R (read only)
- Compact Flash Memory
- DLT 20/40 Tapes
- USB, SCSI, Firewire
- Member of Vanderbilt Network: Accessible to all Resources
