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StatsDirect Statistical Software - Breaking the Mould for Health Research

StatsDirect is a general statistical package that breaks the mould of conventional statistical software by providing health-focused, state-of- the-art calculations in easy to use form at low cost. This article traces the origins of StatsDirect.

As a medical student in 1989, I was struck by the difficulties that clinical research colleagues have in accessing and interpreting statistical methods from commonly used, high cost statistical software. I was also aware of poor research that crumbled under lack of statistical appreciation and poor/late communication between statisticians and researchers. My response was to write statistical software for non-statisticians, and this became the Arcus project.

During the 1990s, early products of the Arcus project were released as Arcus ProStat for DOS and later Arcus QuickStat (Biomedical) for Windows. By 1999, the Computational Statistics part of Arcus research and development
covered all commonly used statistical methods in health research and new software, StatsDirect, was written for 32 bit Windows platforms. High precision validation mechanisms were introduced, in an academic framework, for the calculations in StatsDirect.

Materials to help improve statistical appreciation were developed hand-in-hand with the numerical work behind StatsDirect. A decade of feedback in the Arcus project had demonstrated three critical areas in software that influence statistical appreciation and actions: prompts to select data, on-line help, and presentation of results. As a result of
these findings, StatsDirect provides much more detailed statistical knowledge support than other commonly used statistical software. Some aspects of the StatsDirect help/knowledge system have been deliberately shaped to encourage and assist the non-statistician user to communicate with a statistician.

On purely commercial grounds, health and related research is not the main market for most statistical software. As a result of this, some statistical methods (e.g. diagnostic tests, number needed to treat, population pyramid plots etc.) that are commonly used in health research are absent from or difficult to access in commonly used statistical software. 

StatsDirect is not purely commercial, and it has been and will continue to be written to meet the statistical needs of health researchers.

The development of StatsDirect over the past eleven years has been a fascinating journey involving many people. The direction of that development towards improved statistical appreciation and practice in health research grows stronger with the ever increasing number of users.

For more information and free trial copies of StatsDirect please see http://www.statsdirect.com

Dr Iain E. Buchan
StatsDirect Programme Director
CamCode
Westbury Barns
Ashwell
HERTS SG7 5PJ
UK
fax/voice mail: +44 (0)1462 743 656