The Big Picture

During Organs, we've been introduced to biostatistics, epidemiology, and genomics. These represent more of a big-picture view of medicine. Biostatistics is critical in helping physicians understand and interpret papers. Furthermore, it's a fundamental basis for designing not only clinical but also laboratory experiments. Epidemiology studies the distribution and determinants of disease frequency. Genomics looks at genome-wide interactions and steps beyond single Mendelian mutations to examine humans as an integration of many genes and environmental factors. Thus, we move beyond the single gene and single patient to look at the complexity of nation-wide and genome-wide health and disease.

I was initially surprised that they introduced this to us during our cardiovascular block. At first, it didn't seem to fit. But we focus our attention on papers that are cardiovascular related, and it seems to work fine. We have to learn all of this sometime, and sooner is better than later.