During the last three or four decades biological , scientific and medical sciences have shown remarkable advances and this has made ‘decision making’, particularly in the fields of health care and medical treatment more and more complex and dependent on the ability of medical and biological scientists to base their decisions on a variety of carefully planned, executed, analysed and interpreted investigations like epidemiological studies, clinical trials, biological assays, laboratory experiments, operational research and hospital and community based registries.

In this context, a medical professional’s training, particularly that of a medical research worker, would be considered incomplete today without a reasonable acquaintance with the potentialities of applications of biostatistical techniques to enable him/her to plan his/her research studies with scientifically and statistically valid designs and to arrive at valid and meaningful conclusions applying appropriate statistical methods. In order to foster the learning of the potentialities of biostatistical applications in health and medical care among the medical researchers and students, it is essential to create an independent department of biostatistics as an integral part of this medical and research Institute. AIMS faculty, research staff, and students interested in doing research work in medicine, biology and public health will have direct access to this department for designing their research protocols for consultation on the statistical analysis of their data and interpreting the results.

Services

• To Train faculty, postgraduate students and scientific staff in research methodologies and biostatistical methods to help them in preparing scientifically and statistically valid research projects, to analyse the data applying appropriate statistical methods and interpreting the results meaningfully and validly
• To conduct workshops and seminars for updating the knowledge in statistical designs and techniques of analyses
• To scrutinize the research proposals for their statistical  and scientific validity
• To conduct research projects for developing appropriate statistical designs and  methods of analysis  needed to the present situations  depending upon the nature of the problem and  the data collected
• To advise and help the Medical colleges and Research Institutes outside AIMS in teaching, training, research and CME programmes whenever requested

The Department will conduct a series of lectures with practicals in biostatistics and research methods for the PG students, faculty and scientific staff. The Department is also planning to conduct regular short term Certificate courses in Biostatistics and Research methods for the benefit of the students, Faculty and scientists in the Institute and also from outside the Institute.

Department Head

Prof. K.R. Sundaram - M.Sc ( Statistics ) from Kerala University (1966); Ph.D in Biostatistics from All India Institute of Medical Sciences(AIIMS), New Delhi (1991) and Certificates in Survey sampling methods and Multivariate techniques from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA (1973).

Prof. K.R. Sundaram has been Statistician cum Lecturer in Medical Statistics in T.D. Medical College, Alleppey, Kerala from Sep.1966 to Dec. 1968; Lecturer in Biostatistics in Medical college Trivandrum from Dec. 1968 to Aug. 1969; Asst. Statistician from Aug. 1969 to Aug. 1972 and Statistician from Sep. 1972 to Sep. 1975 in Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi and Senior Research Officer (Biostatistics) from Sep. 1975 to Jan. 1976 in National Institute of Virology of ICMR in Pune; Associate Professor in Biostatistics in All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi from Jan. 1976 to June,1983; Additional Professor from July 1983 to March, 1996 and Professor and Head from March,1996 to 31st ,October, 2005. Head of the Dept. From Feb., 1991, Also worked as visiting Consultant and faculty in the College of Medicine, Sultan Qaboos University, Sultanate of Oman for five years from 1995.

Research: Main /Co-Investigator/Consultant in more than 75 research projects in AIIMS  and outside and Guide/Co-guide in more than 100  Post-graduate Theses/Dissertations.

Publications: 167 papers (63 in International Journals, 81 in National Journals, 11 chapters in Books and 12 in the Proceedings of  the Conferences)

Conferences attended: 47, including 8 International Conferences

Area of specialization: Application of basic and advanced statistical methods to  medical, biological and epidemiological  research data ,especially in Growth and development and nutrition of children, clinical trials and epidemiological studies of  drug abuse and various diseases in the population