Biomedical Statistics and Clinical Epidemiology (BMSCE) seeks to publish significant research on the development and application of statistical and epidemiological methods to problems arising from medicine and its applied sciences. The main aim of BMSCE, published four-monthly, is to improve dialogue among biostatisticians, clinicians and medical researchers, encouraging understanding of quantitative methods linked both to the problems that physicians face on a daily basis, and to the great challenges facing the modern public health that demand specific health policies.