Biostatistics & Biomedical Informatics Core
Biostatistics & Research Ethics Resource (BRER)
The mission of the Biostatistics and Research Ethics Resource (BRER) is to
promote excellence in clinical and translational research by providing
biostatistical and research ethics support/collaboration during the design,
conduct and analysis phases of your clinical and translational research
projects. Assistance may be provided in many areas of research planning,
development and analysis, including proposal development, experimental design,
data analysis, manuscript preparation and interpretation and presentation of
results. If you would like to talk to a BRER statistician or ethicist, please
complete the Consult Request.
Once you have submitted the request, you will be contacted by a BRER
statistician within 3 business days.
The BRER aims to be easily accessible and comprehensive, offering support on
several levels:
- Consultation—A basic level of consultation is available to all members in order to encourage and facilitate concept formulation of research ideas. Advice may be related to a pre-application activity. Statisticians assist with planning and design of studies, conduct of investigations, and data analysis. This limited consultation is available free of charge. This policy is to enhance science at UW and at MC and to encourage faculty, especially young investigators, to seek input at the earliest stage when this input is most critical. Our philosophy is that successful consultations often turn into collaborative relationships in which BRER statisticians are an integral part of the research team.
- Collaboration—projects that require more extensive ongoing support are expected to provide separate funding through individual grants and contracts, usually by including effort, salary and computing support for the resource faculty and staff. Collaborative efforts often result in co-authorship of papers in scientific journals. Such collaborations may stimulate biostatistical research on new methods to address emerging scientific questions.
- Methodology—Not all consultations and collaborations can be addressed by textbook or published biostatistical methods. Biostatisticians must often modify existing methods, or develop new methods, to meet the experimental design and data analysis needs of emerging projects. The result of the biostatistics methodology research is often of significant value to the original collaborating investigator, as well as to the research community at large.
- Training—The BRER will provide all clinical/translational researchers with training in biostatistical and clinical trial methods, and education in research ethics.
Biomedical Informatics & Data Warehouse
The University of Wisconsin–Madison and the Marshfield Clinic both have decades of experience applying informatics to the problems of clinical trials and clinical care. Each brings different and complementary strengths to the proposed collaboration.
The ICTR Biomedical Informatics Resource (BMIR) provides ICTR members with consulting, collaboration and the development of new methods and technology to address their research problems. Members have access to senior BMIR faculty and staff with expertise in Bioinformatics, Genetics/Genomics, Image Analysis and Visualization, Clinical Informatics and Public Health Informatics. Currently BMIR faculty are conducting research in fields such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data mining. Applications of this research include gene sequencing, gene-chip technology, cancer diagnosis, and combinatorial pharmacology.
The Marshfield biomedical informatics resource, with the creation of the UW-Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR), is expanding its translational informatics resources and offering them to a substantially greater percentage of the active research faculty who are Institute members.
Approach and Philosophy
Our approach is to provide limited short-term advice on informatics
issues in the design, conduct, or analysis of studies but with a goal of
becoming collaborators in the projects as they develop. Initial advice may be
related to a pre-application activity or internal Institute review of general
issues faced by an investigator. The consulting may also take the form of an
informatics faculty member advising informatics staff, graduate students and/or
post-docs in consultancy with a biomedical researcher.
BMIR also seeks collaborations between informatics and other disciplines. The philosophy of the collaborative research is that it begins with consultancies, and successful consultancies often turn into a collaborative experience, with the informatics faculty and staff an integral part of the research team. As the collaboration matures, it often becomes independently funded. However, not all problems that arise can be solved by existing methods and may not fit exactly into faculty’s independent research grant. Thus, some additional research efforts may be needed through methodological research grants. The Bioinformatics Informatics Resource will also continue to provide and expand education and training in these areas of Biomedical Informatics.
