Premium
Estimating the value of an internal biostatistical consulting service
Author(s) -
Parker Robert A.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
statistics in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.996
H-Index - 183
eISSN - 1097-0258
pISSN - 0277-6715
DOI - 10.1002/1097-0258(20000830)19:16<2131::aid-sim510>3.0.co;2-n
Subject(s) - liberian dollar , service (business) , value (mathematics) , institution , term (time) , computer science , operations research , marketing , actuarial science , business , engineering , finance , sociology , physics , quantum mechanics , machine learning , social science
Biostatistical consulting is a service business. Although a consulting biostatistician's goal is long‐term collaborative relationships with investigators, this is the same as the long‐term goal of any business: having a group of contented, satisfied customers. In this era of constrained resources, we must be able to demonstrate that the benefit a biostatistical consulting group provides to its organization exceeds its actual cost to the institution. In this paper, I provide both a theoretical framework for assessing the value of a biostatistical service and provide an ad hoc method to value the contribution of a biostatistical service to a grant. Using the methods described, our biostatistics group returns more than $6 for each dollar spent on institutional support in 1998. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.