The Department of Biomedical and Health Informatics (DBHI) offers a research and statistical consulting service.  Although the mission of the program is to foster innovative research by supporting faculty, residents, fellows, and students on the Hospital Hill Campus, this service will be available to others at UMKC on a space-available basis. This service will:

• Promote high-quality research by consulting on proper research design
• Support researchers in making sample size estimates
• Assist researchers in ethical and accepted methods of data analysis and interpretation.

 

Guidelines for Using the Consulting Service

1. The RSCS staff must be consulted at the beginning of the project; usually this should be before data collection has started. In some cases where secondary data are analyzed this condition would be waived.
2. The recipient of the consult service must submit the following documents to the RSCS office:
   • A draft project abstract of 250 words that specifies the Objectives, Methods, Anticipated Results, and Potential Conclusions of the Project. If the project is a clinical trial, a brief (250 words maximum) project summary using the PICO format if it is applicable to the particular study must also be submitted.
   • the population being studied,
   • the intervention or exposure,
   • the comparison or control group, and
   • the primary outcome measure(s).

   We understand that not every project will fit neatly into this format, but any abstract for different types of research should provide a comparable level of detail.

3. For students, residents, and fellows a letter of support for the project from the program director or faculty mentor will be required to verify that the project has been reviewed at the program level.
4. If the project requires Human Subjects approval, documentation of this must be forwarded to the office prior to data collection and analysis.
5. To request service, submit required information and documents online here.

The users of this service need to perform their own data collection and analysis.

If you are faculty and using the DBHI staff to develop a grant for extramural funding we would encourage you to have our statistician included in the programs proposed budget as a certain percentage FTE for the project. In such cases, details will be worked out with the DBHI staff in order to establish appropriate work/payment levels.

In return the DBHI Office will provide the following support:

1. One two-hour consultation at the start of the project to help with study design, data collection issues, and establish timelines. We will make every attempt to schedule this appointment within one month of the initial request or sooner if possible. But it must be realized that a good number of the people supporting this service are volunteers.
2. Email support in follow-up for statistical issues as they develop.
3. One two-hour consultation at the end of the project to help review findings and conclusions.
4. Review of drafts of papers to be submitted to medical or other peer reviewed journals. We would anticipate that the staff person who works on the project will be listed as one of the co-authors to the publication.

 

Contacts:

For questions about completing the REDCap form, please contact Ricardo Moniz.
For general questions about the service, please contact Dr. An-Lin Cheng.