Complete and reliable statistical information is the necessary foundation on which the management and organization of health care in all countries is based. All information of medical relevance is ultimately processed and analyzed using medical statistics. Medical and statistical data make it possible to determine the incidence of certain types of pathology, highlight the most priority areas for the preventive work of doctors, identify the main trends in the development of diseases, and predict the outcome of epidemics.
The development of modern medicine is largely due to the ongoing statistical research, which makes it possible to assess the level of health of the population, periods of rising and fall in morbidity. It helps to determine the ratio of healthy people and disabled people, the effectiveness and availability of health care personnel, equipment, the frequency of occurrence of new diseases, and much more. Based on medical statistics, forecasts are created, and problem areas are identified, for which new ways and methods of solution need to be sought. Currently, medical statistics are constantly being modernized. The annual change in federal statistical observation and the introduction of new monitoring contribute to obtaining more detailed indicators for further analysis in the healthcare sector.
The statistical application assesses the level of risk in a patient with one pathology or another, analyzes the patient’s condition, and chooses the most rational treatment method to investigate the level of health of both an individual patient and a selected group (up to the health of the nation. It helps to examine the population’s standard of living and its relationship with the level of fitness as “selection is a fundamental problem in survival analysis” (He, 2020, p. 3). It is essential for determining the influence of environmental factors on the state of the patient’s body and other medico-social, medico-biological, medico-economic, and medico-statistical phenomena and processes.
Mastering statistical methodology is one of the conditions for the medical market conjuncture, the study of trends and forecasting, making optimal decisions at all activity levels. Statistical methods can be different and are based on “disproportionality analysis, traditional pharmacoepidemiological designs (e.g. self-controlled designs), sequence symmetry analysis (SSA), sequential statistical testing, temporal association rules, supervised machine learning (SML), and the tree-based scan statistic” (Arnaud, et al., 2017, p. 722). The final, analytical stage of the research is complex, laborious, and responsible. At this stage, the average and distribution indicators are considered, the population structure is analyzed, the dynamics and the relationship between the studied phenomena and processes are investigated. At all stages of statistical research, statistics use various methods. Therefore, full knowledge of the foundations of medical statistics is the indispensable condition for successful medical practice.
In medical statistics as a scientific and practical discipline, three main interrelated components can be distinguished: public health statistics, statistics of the health care system, theoretical and methodological foundations of medical statistics. Additionally, “during the construction process of figures on health and healthcare, choices are made on definitions of what is counted and measured, which inclusion and exclusion criteria are used, and which methodology is applied; moreover, interests of the involved parties may influence the results” (Gerrits, et al., 2018, p. 1). The purpose of the activities of medical organizations is to preserve people’s health, reduce mortality, morbidity, and disability of the population with the optimal use of financial, material, and human resources.
Effective health care management is associated with the need for timely receipt and analysis of complete, reliable, scientifically grounded statistical information on social, economic, demographic, environmental, and other social phenomena in the field of public health protection. Statistics play a fundamental role in the population’s quality, safety, and health promotion as “the true data values are synonymously used actual or observed data” (Sabharwal, 2021, p. 23). Health statistics analyze data on medical institutions and their activities and evaluates the effectiveness of various organizational measures to prevent and treat diseases. Population health statistics develop specific methods and techniques for collecting, processing, analyzing, and assesing medical and statistical information about all processes and phenomena that characterize the state and dynamics of the health of the population.
Currently, I get statistics from surveys: direct observation; documentary way; survey – forwarding, questionnaire, attendance, correspondence. Statistical methods of data analysis are used whenever necessary to obtain and substantiate any judgments about a group with some internal heterogeneity. In statistical methods of data analysis, it is advisable to distinguish three types of scientific and applied activities (according to the degree of specificity of methods associated with immersion in specific problems): development and research of universal methods without considering the specifics of the field of application.
Moreover, it is a development and research of statistical models of natural phenomena and processes by the needs of a particular field of activity; the use of statistical methods and models for statistical analysis of specific data in solving applied problems, for example, to conduct sample surveys. A lot of statistical knowledge is used for everyday life: the collection of information, the ability to distribute it, and based on this, make decisions. Statistics are vital for making a decision since the most optimal choice will depend on the data obtained, which will help make a decision. Thus, statistics play one of the most crucial roles in the health care system. On its basis, decisions are created and made regarding the work of organizations and the general health of the population, which helps to improve the health of the nation and humanity as a whole.
References
Arnaud, M., Begaud, B., Thurin, N., Moore, N., Pariente, A. & Francesco S. (2017). Methods for safety signal detection in healthcare databases: a literature review.Expert opinion on drug safety, 16(6), 721–732.
Gerrits, R.G., Kringos, D.S., van den Berg, M.J. & Klazinga, N. S. (2018). Improving interpretation of publically reported statistics on health and healthcare: the Figure Interpretation Assessment Tool (FIAT-Health). Health research Policy and Systems, 16(20), 1-12.
He, X. (2020). Statistical detection and survival analysis with applications in sensor networks and healthcare (Publication No. 22693) [Master’s thesis, Georgia Institute of Technology]. Georgia Tech Theses and Dissertations
Sabharwal, C. L. (2021). Cohen’s Kappa Statistic and newKappaStatistic for Measuring and Interpreting Inter-Rater Agreement. International Journal of Research in Engineering and Science, 2320(9364), 23-28.