Statistical methods have become increasingly important and now form integral part of research in the health sciences. Many sophisticated methodologies have been developed for specific applications and problems. This self-contained volume, an outgrowth of an "International Conference on Statistical Methods in Health Sciences," covers a wide range of topics pertaining to new statistical methods and novel applications in the health sciences.

Prognostic Studies and General Epidemiology.- Systematic Review of Multiple Studies of Prognosis: The Feasibility of Obtaining Individual Patient Data.- On Statistical Approaches for the Multivariable Analysis of Prognostic Marker Studies.- Where Next for Evidence Synthesis of Prognostic Marker Studies? Improving the Quality and Reporting of Primary Studies to Facilitate Clinically Relevant Evidence-Based Results.- Pharmacovigilance.- Sentinel Event Methods for Monitoring Unanticipated Adverse Events.- Spontaneous Reporting System Modelling for the Evaluation of Automatic Signal Generation Methods in Pharmacovigilance.- Quality of Life.- Latent Covariates in Generalized Linear Models: A Rasch Model Approach.- Sequential Analysis of Quality of Life Measurements with the Mixed Partial Credit Model.- A Parametric Degradation Model Used in Reliability, Survival Analysis, and Quality of Life.- Agreement Between Two Ratings with Different Ordinal Scales.- Survival Analysis.- The Role of Correlated Frailty Models in Studies of Human Health, Ageing, and Longevity.- Prognostic Factors and Prediction of Residual Survival for Hospitalized Elderly Patients.- New Models and Methods for Survival Analysis of Experimental Data.- Uniform Consistency for Conditional Lifetime Distribution Estimators Under Random Right-Censorship.- Sequential Estimation for the Semiparametric Additive Hazard Model.- Variance Estimation of a Survival Function with Doubly Censored Failure Time Data.- Clustering.- Statistical Models and Artificial Neural Networks: Supervised Classification and Prediction Via Soft Trees.- Multilevel Clustering for Large Databases.- Neural Networks: An Application for Predicting Smear Negative Pulmonary Tuberculosis.- Assessing Drug Resistance in HIV Infection Using Viral LoadUsing Segmented Regression.- Assessment of Treatment Effects on HIV Pathogenesis Under Treatment By State Space Models.- Safety and Efficacy Assessment.- Safety Assessment Versus Efficacy Assessment.- Cancer Clinical Trials with Efficacy and Toxicity Endpoints: A Simulation Study to Compare Two Nonparametric Methods.- Safety Assessment in Pilot Studies When Zero Events Are Observed.- Clinical Designs.- An Assessment of Up-and-Down Designs and Associated Estimators in Phase I Trials.- Design of Multicentre Clinical Trials with Random Enrolment.- Statistical Methods for Combining Clinical Trial Phases II And III.- SCPRT: A Sequential Procedure That Gives Another Reason to Stop Clinical Trials Early.- Models for the Environment.- Seasonality Assessment for Biosurveillance Systems.- Comparison of Three Convolution Prior Spatial Models for Cancer Incidence.- Longitudinal Analysis of Short-Term Bronchiolitis Air Pollution Association Using Semiparametric Models.- Genomic Analysis.- Are There Correlated Genomic Substitutions?.- Animal Health.- Swiss Federal Veterinary Office Risk Assessments: Advantages and Limitations of The Qualitative Method.- Qualitative Risk Analysis in Animal Health: A Methodological Example.