5. Health and Data Science

Question 1

What is a cross sectional study?

Answer 1

Measures risk factors vs outcomes at the same time

e.g. does this cause this

Question 2

What are the strenghts and weaknesses of a cross sectional study?

Answer 2

Easy and cheap to do
Provide important information on the distribution of exposures and outcomes

Measures prevalence not incidence
difficult to establish time sequence

Question 3

What is a case controlled study

Answer 3

takes patients with and without disease and compares behaviours between them

Question 4

Strengths and weaknesses of case controlled studies?

Answer 4

Quick and relatively cheap
Good for studying rare diseases
Good for diseases with long exposure vs outcome

Prone to selection bias
Prone to informtion bias
Was risk factor present before disease or only dveloped after `

Question 5

What is a cohort study

Answer 5

A group is followed up, risk factors identified and then who gets the disease is linked to the risk factors

Question 6

Strengths and weaknesses of a cohort study?

Answer 6

Measure multiple outcomes
Provides data over long time course

Potentially expensive
ineffective for rare diseases
exposure status may change during study
loss of follow up may introduce bias

Question 7

What is meant by deep learning

Answer 7

Uses neural connections similar to the brain to adapt to situations

dont need to know how it works like a microwave