Statistics in Telemedicine

All those concerned with the decision-making, they take better decisions when they use all the available information with practical and interpretable way. Statistics provide methods for data collection and analysis to support the decision-making. Statistics is the Science of collection, analysis and interpretation of observed data reported in attributes of natural or social phenomena. Utilization of statistical methods included in the content of Statistical Science, allows the collection, classification, presentation and analysis of data. The statistical methods are objective and have mathematical background and formulation. The term population in the Statistics (Dodge, 2008; Everitt & Howel, 2005; Salkind, 2007) implies enumerations or measurements reported in a collection of beings or objects. A sample is a limited number of units and is extracted from the population under study according to the rules placed by the theory of sampling. The term data collection involves the process of measurement or enumeration of attributes of units of the population. In Statistics two sectors are included (Dodge, 2008; Everitt & Howel, 2005; Salkind, 2007), the Descriptive Statistics and the Inferential Statistics. Descriptive Statistics provides the systematic, quantitative description of natural, social and other phenomena. Descriptive statistics involves the study as well as the presentation, with more convenient way, of the data that exhibit features and behavior of these phenomena. Inferential Statistics has as subject the generalisation of conclusions that follow from the descriptive statistical data analyses performed in a representative sample, despite the existence of sampling errors, the margin of which is determined by the statistical induction at the generalisation. This study attempts to provide answers regarding various questions. It presents the framework of statistical studies in Telemedicine and describes the statistical methods used in Telemedicine research and evaluation (diagnostic tests, quality control, reliability analysis, sensitivity analysis, multivariate analysis, statistical pattern recognition and metaanalysis). It also exploits the potential of statistical use in testing capacity/overall performance, reliability/endurance and scalability/benchmarking of a web based telemedicine platform with different numbers of simulated users for a user-defined time and presents vulnerability statistics available for testing the security of a web based Telemedicine platform. It also describes questionnaire based statistics for the evaluation of patient’s satisfaction and the contribution of statistics in new bio-markers detection. Further, qualitative and quantitative statistical techniques, regarding the electronic medical records