Biostatistics Career – How rewarding it can be ?
Biostatistics Career Demand
There are many opportunities flourishing worldwide in the field of biostatistics throughout academia, industry and government. Report said that Biostatistician as a career ranked #3 in the US and the vacancies have increased by 14% and 34% over a period from 2020 and 2024 respectively.
According to the Forbes reports “Those who complete a graduate degree in biostatistics can look forward to an estimated projected job market growth of 18 percent, which is much higher than average.
Mid-career biostatisticians earn salaries averaging $104,000” Biostatistician job is very competitive nowadays as many graduates are there, but their demand is also keep equalizing since lot more vacancies are there especially in pharmaceutical field. Every year 11% vacancies are increasing for biostatisticians.
Biostatistician Qualification and Salary
Bachelor’s degree is enough to start a career as a biostatistician, but some typical complex work needs a qualified candidate of Master of Science or Doctor of Philosophy in Biostatistics. Entry level positions can even work independently. It is not always that career should be started in a bigger organization, even with enthusiastic independent association the work can be started at the initial stage. They will get an attractive salary.
It was reported that in India the salary for a biostatistician usually ranges from Rs.2,60,000 to Rs. 14,60,000 per year based on experience. On the other hand, in the U.S. a person with one year of experience earns $46,000-$76,000, whereas with five to nine years of experience, they can earn approximately $69,000 to $99,000. Similarly, those with more than ten years of experience usually earn as much as $117,000 per annum. Indeed.com reported that the median salary for biostatisticians is $90,000 and The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the median salary for statisticians is $72,000.
Biostatistician Career Opportunity Availability
Biostatisticians opportunities are easily available in India, Middle East, USA, UK, and in other parts of the world. Biostatisticians job is available in pharmaceutical companies, Universities, Medical research centers, Biomedicine, Public health, Hospitals, Agriculture, Government agencies, Research institutes, Contract research organization, regulating authority for clinical trials-based channels etc. both Nationally and Internationally. They can work independently for private organization or public sector to solve healthcare problems.
Qualities Required To Be a Biostatistician
In order to be a successful biostatistician essential characteristics include being a personality with intellect, transferable skills as well as collaborative and problem solving approach with a creative mode.
Biostatisticians should have a potential analytical skill, critical thinking and understanding of the problem to give an effective solution. They should also possess presence of mind, resource management skills, computer knowledge, excellent interpersonal communication skills both written and verbally.
Biostatistician Mode of work
Biostatistician normally work with a computer daily inside the office. Collaborative and teamwork with other researchers or other biostatistician are very much required in this field. Similarly, they need to handle too many projects simultaneously. They require a lot of time for designing and executing the statistical model. They also do a lot of teleconference and travels during their work especially for field work. They have quite a lot of advantages of getting a high salary, have a nice and energetic environment. They have personal satisfaction, since they are giving a solution for haunting medical issues. The challenging part of the work is that it can take more time for the project to get completed by the individual. They should have a deep knowledge in statistics, otherwise they cannot make novel statistical models to solve real-life problems.
Biostatistician Unique Ability
Biostatistician can analyze and summarize the data with clear cut interpretation in biomedical context. It emphasizes mainly to solve public health problems with the combinatorial effect of scientific research and statistical models. This job requires an extensive groundbreaking research on a daily basis to address real world problems so as to bring global revolutions by showing the impact of pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, novel immunization technique through effective statistical model thereby trying to prevent or decrease the infectious as well as chronic diseases as well.
Big analytics of Clinical trial data sets can analyze and formulate information in a meaningful way. They can also monitor the data management plans. If a person keeps facing the constant challenges or puzzles while solving the problem, he can easily withstand this job. This is a job which is growing rapidly with wide opportunities in different fields with personal rewards of decent salary, with professional satisfaction of analyzing numerous data sets and giving improvised model to benefit the community. They can taste early success in their career.
Biostatistician Career Making
If you are interested in Mathematics, statistics, biology and want to bring a change to the world then definitely opt for biostatistics and grab any great opportunity worldwide. During the high school itself one must study mathematics, science and try learning some programming also. Check the colleges where undergraduate’s degree in biostatistics and check for the required qualifications as well.
Sometimes if you miss a chance to study a biostatistics degree at the undergraduate level, you can start with a course based on mathematics, statistics, epidemiology, chemistry or ecology. Meanwhile learn some programming language and statistical package software. Then you can pursue a postgraduate and doctorate with specialization in biostatistics. These degrees are important like the trumpet card during the job opportunity. So please do choose a degree wisely, in a planned way and grab the opportunity well. If you prefer to work in academia, government or industry, doctorate is essential.
If you want to work in a clinical trial based, then even a bachelor’s or master’s degree in biostatistics with proficiency in SAS programming will suffice. The best thing you could experience is that with an undergraduate degree itself you can enter a job, gain deep insights which will be exhibited and enrich you during postgraduate as well as doctorate studies. While doing course itself you can get an internship at some universities or industry that will turn out to be a great learning experience. As per one report, 48% of the already working biostatisticians hold a master’s degree.
Biostatisticians and Public Health
Most job vacancies for public health with a biostatistics knowledge will take you to greater heights especially in World Health Organization, National Institutes of Health, and other National and international government agencies as well. In the future, being a biostatistician would be a dream job to most people. Even if you are working in a health care you are not going to work directly with the patients, but the biostatistics career will create a greater and strong impact towards public health systems worldwide. This career is very much attractive to the employee as they need to address different kinds of work to do. Many of the biostatisticians will work in public health organizations, medical device manufacturers, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.
Association & Resource For Biostatistician
There are many associations available for biostatisticians: American statistical association, Council of Professional Associations on Federal statistics, Institute of Mathematical Statistics, International statistics Institute, American Public Health Association, the World Health Organization and the Association of state and territorial Health officials.
Some of the useful resources for Biostatisticians are Oxford Journals- Biostatistics, Harvard University Department of Biostatistics, Coursera- Mathematical Biostatistics Boot Camp and Online Biostatistician courses catalog.
Choosing a right career with nominal job vacancy frequency, good salary and substantial personal satisfaction is very much difficult to find nowadays. We hope that a Biostatistician career can fulfill all of these and also bring revolution to the community through their novel strategy.