The content and character of the discipline of Biostatistics has undergone a radical change during the last few decades. From being a passive and descriptive discipline, Biostatistics has emerged as a vigorous, dynamic and constructive instrument of decision making in the area of health and medical care. Powerful and sophisticated statistical techniques of planning and analysis of biological experiments and investigations, development of probabilistic models in epidemiology and application of operations research techniques in health care delivery have opened up new dimensions and capabilities in medical and health research. In this context, a medical persons’ training, particularly that of a medical researcher, would be considered incomplete today without a reasonable acquaintance with the potentialities of applications of bio-statistical techniques to enable him/her to plan his/her research studies with scientifically and statistically valid designs and to arrive at valid and meaningful conclusions applying appropriate statistical methods.

At the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Biostatistics was a part of the then Department of Preventive and Social Medicine till 1973. In October 1973, an independent Biostatistics Unit was carved out from the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine. In 1986, the “Biostatistics Unit” was renamed as the “Department of Biostatistics” fulfilling a long felt need for such a department. As an independent department, it caters to the needs of all the faculty, scientific staff and students in the Institute in teaching and research.