Editing Biostatistics (section)

== Scope and training programs ==

Almost all educational programmes in biostatistics are at [[postgraduate]] level. They are most often found in schools of public health, affiliated with schools of medicine, forestry, or agriculture, or as a focus of application in departments of statistics.

In the United States, where several universities have dedicated biostatistics departments, many other top-tier universities integrate biostatistics faculty into statistics or other departments, such as [[epidemiology]]. Thus, departments carrying the name "biostatistics" may exist under quite different structures. For instance, relatively new biostatistics departments have been founded with a focus on [[bioinformatics]] and [[computational biology]], whereas older departments, typically affiliated with schools of [[public health]], will have more traditional lines of research involving epidemiological studies and [[clinical trial]]s as well as bioinformatics. In larger universities around the world, where both a statistics and a biostatistics department exist, the degree of integration between the two departments may range from the bare minimum to very close collaboration. In general, the difference between a statistics program and a biostatistics program is twofold: (i) statistics departments will often host theoretical/methodological research which are less common in biostatistics programs and (ii) statistics departments have lines of research that may include biomedical applications but also other areas such as industry ([[quality control]]), business and [[economics]] and biological areas other than medicine.