The use of biomarkers to assess exposures and investigate biomedical questions is exploding in epidemiological and medical research. Exploring the relationships between biomarker levels and health outcomes can have potentially profound effects on the biomedical community, leading to new etiological discoveries, as well as increased diagnostic capabilities for disease.
In estimating parameters of interest such as means, variances, hazard and odds ratios for a particular biomarker, population scientists face two main challenges: (1) overcoming the cost of performing a large number of assays and (2) dealing with measurement error either due to technical or intra-individual variability. In this workshop, we will explore new designs and analytical techniques to overcome some of the challenges while studying biomarkers, such as pooling designs, hybrid designs, calibration techniques, threshold evaluation and causal methods. We will cover how different biomarkers are measured and that affects epidemiological parameters of interest.
