Validation of Diagnostic Tests
Diagnostic tests are developed to assist with the diagnosis of a disease or medical problem, but, be quicker, cheaper or less invasive than a reference test (or 'gold standard'), against which they are evaluated. The evaluation process is often known as validation of a diagnostic test. Long established in diagnostic medicine, screening and epidemiology, these techniques have been widely applied in medicine and health related areas such as pregnancy testing, addiction and mental health diagnosis, and more general medical screening.
This course is a combination of presentations and computer-based practicals, whereby theory is firmly placed into practice. A variety of medical and health examples will be used. Practical work will be based around Stata.
Who Should Attend?
Medical scientists and related who wish to be conversant with the process of evaluation of diagnostic tests. Familiarity with standard errors and confidence intervals for proportions is required. Knowledge equivalent to topics in our course A Review of Basic Statistics would be ideal.
How You Will Benefit
Participants will learn about standard measures and techniques that are used to evaluate the performance of diagnostic tests that yield a yes/no outcome. You will also learn how to extend these techniques to diagnostic tests that yield categorical or continuous outcomes.
What Do We Cover?
Practical work will be done in: Stata
Note: For practical work, participants must bring their own laptop with a fully licensed version of the software.