Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center

Vanderbilt Biostatistics Shared Resource

About Biostatistics Shared Resource

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, by providing statistical expertise in study design, power and sample size analysis; data analysis; interpretation of results; and writing of manuscripts
• Provide relational database design, data tracking, forms, queries, and reports for investigator-initiated clinical trial databases or laboratory study databases
• 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 ensure timely data capture
• Train VICC members in research design and data analysis through seminars, short statistical workshops, and 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 related research grant applications.

Equipment and Tools

Thirty 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

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