Clinical trials have two purposes -- to treat the patients in the trial, and to obtain information which increases our understanding of the disease and especially how patients respond to treatment. Statistical design provides a means to achieve both these aims, while statistical data analysis provides methods for extracting useful information from the trial data. Recent advances in statistical computing have enabled statisticians to implement very rapidly a broad array of methods which previously were either impractical or impossible. Biostatisticians are now able to provide much greater support to medical researchers working in both clinical and laboratory settings. As our collective toolkit of techniques for analyzing data has grown, it has become increasingly difficult for biostatisticians to keep up with all the developments in our own field. Recent Advances in Clinical Trial Design and Analysis brings together biostatisticians doing cutting-edge research and explains some of the more recent developments in biostatistics to clinicians and scientists who work in clinical trials.
