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Hi here, My company is planning to buy some statistical program for our Clinical Researches. Can you advise which one and why is better. We have a lot of offers and have difficulty to choose one. And also, I need to deepen my knowledge in Biostatistics and I will be thankful if you share information about on-line Biostatistic certificate courses or any other information about learning statistics. Thanks

  • samuelschumacher Samuel Schumacher 7 Jun 2012

    Hi Nino.

    I have a fair amount of experience with Stata and R and have seen some SAS. From what I know and hear form others that have more extensive experience with SAS: Stata and R are easier to learn and more efficient to use than SAS. Stata is overall very user-friendly and has a good GUI with dialog boxes and drop-down menus while R is purely command-line driven. On the other hand R is free and very flexible. With any of these programs you will be able to handle the analyses typically required in clinical trials.

    For courses: if you want an actual certificate, you may want to check what the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine offers. There are a highly recognized institution and have been offering distance learning for some time. You could do a course in epidemiology or even clinical trials if you know this is all you will be doing. As mentioned above, Hopkins OCW is a great source to read for yourself, but does not offer certificates as far as I'm aware. Another nice source is what UC Berkeley offers (mp3s and webcasts).

    Good luck,
    Samuel

  • misia2007 Maria Sliwowska 6 Jun 2012

    Hi Nino,
    I have had a chance to audit some of the companies using WinNonLin and I agree with Sameer, it is probably one of the primary programs used in PK/PD analysis and has a lot of already built in standard models. It also is able to accept/interchange data with other major systems like SAS. But, I also have not seen it used outside of bioequivalence studies analysis. I think it really depends on the purpose for which you mainly plan to use your system.
    SAS is probably the one mostly used and recognized, but expensive. I worked with STATA personally and I also find it very user friendly.
    Maria

  • sameerparpia Sameer Parpia 29 May 2012

    Hi Nino

    As mentioned by other members, the 3 big ones are SAS, R and STATA.

    I have never used WinNonLin, but it is primarily a PK/PD analysis software from what I understand.

    My guess is one of the big 3 are better general statistical analysis programs.

    sameer

  • nshiukashvili Nino Shiukashvili 28 May 2012

    Thanks for your timely replies.
    We need these program for reports and of course it must be licensed. We were advised from some external auditors to buy WinNonLin License. Is it ok?

    Thanks Clarissa for your replay, I have found this link, too, but is doesn't provide certificate.

  • prabindahal Prabin Dahal 28 May 2012

    There is no exact answer to this question. The choice of the software depends the nature of work, how much time you can spend (on learning) and of course, on how much budget you can allocate. SAS, Stata, R and Statistica are some of the popular softwares out there. SAS and R will need some investment of time to learn. However, they have the flexibility of generating the output to suit your needs (advantage of a programming software).
    One of the biggest advantages of R is that it is totally free and does almost what every major commercial software can offer.
    If you looking for an open source software then R is the natural choice else Stata or SAS will be a good choice for clinical analysis.
    If the clinical work your company does require to following Good Clinical Practices (GCP) and if there is need to report the results to a regulatory body, then SAS will be the obvious choice.

    Many Thanks
    Prabin

  • clarissam Clarissa Moreira 28 May 2012

    Hi Nino,

    John Hopkins School of public health have a biostatistics course online that includes pdfs of slides and mp3s of the recorded lectures:

    http://ocw.jhsph.edu/courses/introbiostats/schedule.cfm

    Although I don't think you receive a certificate on completion.

    As for statistical programs, I'm not an expert by any means, so the following is just my opinion.

    The choice depends on how much money you have to spend, the experience of the users (with regards to biostatistics and previous use of statistical programs), what they plan to use it for and what support is offered at your company/institution.

    I personally use Stata which is not too expensive, is user friendly and the University of Oxford, where I work, offers many short courses in Stata so that I can continually improve my skills.

    Our Statisticians and Mathematically Modellers use R. R has the advantage of being free and flexible. As it is open source, there is a large community of users online. I've found R a bit hard to get into. It's definitely not as user friendly as Stata but once you are proficient, it is a very powerful program.

    Hope this helps!

    Clarissa

  • romollo Raymond Omollo 28 May 2012

    Hi
    There are a number of statistical analysis programs one can use from open source to off the shelf softwares. If you are thinking of the later then STATA or SAS would be appropriate though my preference is STATA which is quite easy to use and has a valuable help function in case you are stuck.One can either get a perpetual or yearly licence.
    As for training courses you can log onto www.stata.com to check what modules are on offer.

    Regards,
    Ray.