Course summary

Develop your understanding of the advanced statistical techniques used in medicine and healthcare, from epidemiology to clinical trials. Course description Our Statistics with Medical Applications MSc trains you to use statistical tools that are central to many areas of medicine: from clinical trials, to disease modelling, to measuring patient outcomes. You’ll develop a detailed working knowledge of essential statistical techniques and concepts, including linear and generalised linear modelling, Bayesian statistics and computational methods. You’ll build up your programming and data analysis skills using the statistical computing software R. You can also deepen your understanding of statistics with optional modules, such as time series analysis and machine learning. You’ll study how these skills are applied in clinical trials and choose from a range of optional modules that focus on the role of statistics in other areas of medicine, such as epidemiology and evaluating healthcare interventions. Around one-third of the course is devoted to your dissertation on a medical or healthcare related topic. This may focus on investigating a data set or a more theoretical or methodological topic. Distance learning students often come with projects designed by their employer. You’ll gain skills to help you stand out in the graduate job market, such as planning and researching a project, data acquisition, problem specification, analysis and reporting your findings. Recent examples of dissertation topics include:

• Modelling recruitment projection in clinical trials with application in trials conducted within the Sheffield Clinical Trials Research Unit

• Longitudinal analysis of outcomes in clinical trials