• By enrolling in the percent effort-based collaboration plan
  • This plan allocates MS and PhD biostatistician percent efforts (typically in the 2.5:1 ratio) to work long-term with research groups, divisions, or departments. This approach makes it easy for the same statisticians to stay involved with a research group and facilitates the building of research teams and planning ahead for grant proposals, manuscripts, and abstract deadlines. It also helps our department plan its recruiting. Groups enrolling in this plan have 20% of the efforts of biostatisticians devoted to the research group paid by the Department of Biostatistics as long as the biostatisticians are doing work that is directly related to research development, teaching, or mentoring.
  • We track time spent working with other departments on this plan so the other groups can make adjustments in percent efforts they fund over time and so that research group leaders know how the resource is being used.
  • An excellent way to fund these efforts is for new faculty to include biostatistical support in their package.
• By fees for service (draft version)
  • Unlike divisions or research groups enrolling in our collaboration plan in which we provide at least a 20% discount in salaries and fringe benefits covered, the fee for service plan involves the other division or research group paying for all salary, fringe benefits, a 25% overhead, and an additional amount depending on how much advance notice is given our faculty and staff to work on the project. Unlike project work, for grant proposal assistance, we charge by the hour using the same rate for all PhD and MS biostatisticians.
    • For requests made more than 45 days before a deadline, the charge for grant proposal assistance for groups not taking part in our collaboration plan is $75 per hour.
    • For emergency requests with a deadline within 4 days of the request (e.g., a grant proposal needing to be completed within 4 days of the biostatistician receiving a draft of the proposal) the hourly charge is tripled.
    • For requests made between 45 days and 5 days of a deadline the additional charge factor varies from 1.0 to 2.5 according to the formula 2.6875 - 0.0375*d, where d is the number of days of advance notice.
    • The Department will provide the PI with an estimate of the expected cost in advance, and a "not to exceed" cost. We will notify the PI before working more hours than the "not to exceed" cost covers.
    • A grant proposal of average complexity with 45 days of advance notice requires about 50 hours of biostatistician time and costs the PI around $3750.
    • For multi-department grant proposals, each group not subscribing to the collaboration plan will be billed separately in proportion to the work done specifically for planning that group's design and analysis.

Biostatistics Clinics

• Monday: General (including diagnostic and prognostic research)
• Tuesday: Omics Data (data in which there are more measurements than subjects; operated with the Dept. of Biomedical Informatics with participation of the Mass Spectrometry Research Center)
• Wednesday: Surgery, Anesthesiology, Emergency and Critical Care Medicine
• Thursday: Clinical Research (non-surgical; co-sponsored by GCRC; Room A3210 MCN)
• Friday: Basic Research

All clinics are held noon-1:15pm and all except for Thursday are held in MCN D2221. For more details visit http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/Clinics.

The Clinics are sponsored by the Dept. of Biostatistics, Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (CTSA), Dept. of Biomedical Informatics, Clinical Research Center, Section of Surgical Sciences, School of Nursing, and the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development.

Who to Contact

Otherwise, if you would like more information or to arrange a meeting to discuss biostatistical support, contact Diane Kolb, Department of Biostatistics, at diane.kolb@vanderbilt.edu or 343-2227.

If your research group is already covered by a Biostatistics Collaboration Plan, contact the lead statistician who is responsible for your group. Assignments are listed at CollaborationAssignments.

• Benefits of Biostatistics to the Basic Scientist
• Collaboration Cost-Sharing Protected Time Plan
• Divisions and Research Groups Currently Covered by the Collaboration Plan
• Short Courses and Other Educational Material
• Checklist for Authors