University Medical Center Rotterdam / Erasmus University Rotterdam

Research in this department focuses on cardiovascular disease epidemiology, epidemiology of neurological and psychiatric diseases and ophthalmologic diseases. In addition, research groups focus on genetic epidemiology, endocrinological epidemiology, pharmaco-epidemiology and on clinical epidemiology of radiological procedures. The Department carries out the Rotterdam Study, a large incidence study on chronic diseases among more than 10,000 elderly. The Department has research consultancy facilities in clinical epidemiology and in biostatistics in the Erasmus University Medical Center. Further details: www.erasmus-epidemiology.nl/

The research projects in this department are grouped into two main programmes: effects of interventions on population health and determinants of population health. The first programme covers research on the development and application of quantitative methods in decision problems in clinical medicine, public health and tropical diseases and on relating the health effects to economic consequences in cost-effectiveness studies. The second programme covers the explanation of patterns of disease and mortality in populations. The determinants of public health that are studied include social factors such as educational level and marital status, demographic factors like aging, medical factors such as access, use and quality of care, and work related factors such as physical load and chemical exposure. Further details: www.erasmusmc.nl/mgz

The research programme of this department investigates behaviour in a broad sense – including the affective and cognitive domains – both as a risk factor and as the outcome of disease or intervention. Its current head points are pain and clinical genetics. Further projects focus on adaptive process and psychotherapy in a realm of medical fields, such as cardiovascular, neurological, and intestinal diseases, and reproduction. Fundamental and psychometric research concentrates on emotions, unconscious processes, coping and defence mechanisms, and quality of life. The programme is carried out in close collaboration with clinical departments of the Erasmus University Medical Center. Further details: www.erasmusmc.nl/mep

The research programme of this department focuses on the study of frequency, determinants, and course of child psychiatric conditions such as anxiety, somatoform disorders, depression, movement disorders, aggressive behaviour, hyperactivity and developmental problems such as autism, learning disorders and mental retardation. The main focus is on longitudinal study of general population samples, clinical samples, and high risk samples. In addition, the contribution of genetic factors in the presence and persistence of psychopathology is studied in twin samples. Because one of the main obstacles hampering the acquisition of knowledge on child psychopathology is the lack of standardized assessment procedures and diagnostic systems, epidemiological approaches are used to develop and test internationally available assessment instruments and diagnostic procedures, and to obtain normative population data.

This department brings together knowledge and experience of social medicine sciences, economics, law and management. Research is targeted on quality and evaluation of health care: structure and financing of health care including health insurance, competition policy in health care and historical developments in these fields, and strategy and management of health care organizations. The Department cooperates closely with the institute for Medical Technology Assessment (iMTA). Further details: www.eur.nl/bmg

Research in this Department is carried out in close collaboration with clinical departments of the Erasmus MC and other departments, in the Netherlands and abroad. There are two groups of research projects. Research on the support of diagnosis and therapy deals with the development of models for the interpretation of data in computer-based patient records, and of biosignals and images. Research on the support of the practice of medicine and health care comprises the development and usage of (integrated) systems for primary care and systems for clinical departments such as internal medicine, cardiology, and pediatrics. Further details: www.eur.nl/fgg/mi

Biostatistics comprises the development and application of statistical methods for the analysis of biomedical and agricultural data. We speak of medical statistics when dealing with medical data only. (Bio)statistical methods can be classified into descriptive and inferential approaches. In descriptive approaches an insightful representation of the collected data is aimed at. With inferential approaches one is able to extrapolate from the collected to data to the population of subjects from which the data have been sampled.

(Bio)statistics has shown an exponential growth over the last three decades thanks to the development of powerful computer hard- and software allowing to tackle increasingly complex questions. This has lead to the development of a rich variety of techniques, such as: survival analysis of clustered data, repeated measurements analyses, models dealing with missing data, meta-analytic techniques with multivariate outcomes, Bayesian methods, etc.

The importance of Biostatistics has grown steadily over time and is now an indispensable tool in medical and epidemiological research. Indeed, each clinical & epidemiological journal requires the scientific assertions to be confirmed by appropriate statistical analyses. This also requires the close collaboration of medical and statistical researchers to produce high quality research.