The BSDDS core was developed to provide collaborative biostatistics expertise. Their mission is to help researchers plan studies & grants, while executing data analyses. They also have a core mission of leveraging electronic health record data (EHR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help researchers go after grants, help clinicians treat patients, and position LSUHSC as a leader in healthcare/research informatics. They work in all areas of research including: Cancer, Trauma, Surgery, Disparities Research, Artificial Intelligence/Predictive Modeling, Population Science, Orthopedics, Dermatology, Dentistry, Pediatrics, Public Health, HIV/AIDS, Cell Biology, Clinical Trials,  Behavioral Health, and many more.

Team members in the BSDDS Core have collective experience in analyzing and planning hundreds of studies. They serve as a first counselor  to study design , help disseminate results via publication, brainstorm future helpful projects/process implementation, and connect researchers from various fields. Specific services that team members in the BSDDS can provide are:

• Analysis of datasets: including large scale electronic health record data, spatial data, repeated measures, and tumor registry data.
  
  
• Help with planning studies: including outcome/data collection choices, sample size determination/power calculations, and adaptive decision making processes. BSDDS core members have cumulative experience planning over 500 research studies.
  
  
• Artificial Intelligence Applications: BSDDS members have experience implementing statistical & machine learning methods in decision-making software. This could include implementing modeling procedures into patient electronic medical records like EPIC to provide better clinical decision-making, coding up error prompts in data entry, and many other applications. Some of these may need careful collaboration with a software engineer. Members have experience deriving all sorts of useful quantities from statistical output that can be implemented in automated decision-making via AI. Their experience in the various statistical fields (Frequentist, Bayesian, & Machine Learning Methods) can be leveraged for prediction and inference of complex biological relationships.
  
  
• Clinical trial design: Dr. Andrew Chapple is an expert in adaptive clinical trial design including stopping rules, treatment allocation, dose-finding, enrichment designs, and subgroup-based decision-making. This service includes all phases of research (pre-clinical bench work, animal studies, phase I, phase II, phase III, hybridized designs). Consultation with BSDDS members can save researchers time, money, and resources through adaptive decision-making.
  
  
• Software Design: Through use of R Graphical User Interfaces, BSDDS members can develop user-friendly software to tackle problems that are frequently seen by various researchers. With the help of software engineers, these user interfaces can be adapted to provide optimal experience for researchers.

Andrew G. Chapple, PhD
Biostatistics Core Director
Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center &
LSUHSC School of Medicine
achapp@lsuhsc.edu

Members of the Biostatistics core have high performance Dell workstations. Dr. Chapple’s Dell Latitude 5530, for example, has over 32GB of RAM, an 11^th Gen Intel ® Core ™ i7-1185G7 @ 3.000Hz with 8 cores on the computer to run up to 8 computationally expensive processes in parallel. All biostatisticians have access to the latest statistical software including (SAS, SPSS, S-Plus, R, StatXact, STATA, WINBUGS, FORTRAN, C/C++, Python, etc.). The School of Medicine provides local IT hardware and software support for faculty, staff, and students.

BSDDS members have access to several high performance computing options. The most powerful option is the Open Science Grid, which is a cloud based cluster consisting of over 70,000 computer cores distributed across North and South America. BSDDS members has successfully used the Open Science Grid to publish 4 papers (with 3 under review) which simulated experiments on thousands of randomly generated scenarios to make theoretical conclusions about superiority of various methods. Dr. Chapple was an invited speaker to the PEARC High Throughput Research Conference in July 2020 and the Open Science Grid Workshop in October 2022 to discuss his use of the resource. 

LSUHSC has a local cluster called TigerFish, which donates unused computer cores to the Open Science Grid. LSUHSC Biostatisticians also have access to the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative ), which is another cluster. Biostatisticians in the core have office space in the Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center. They have a working relationship with the biostatistics program in the School of Public Health and advise MS and PhD biostatistics students from Public Health.

The BSDDS core will always help new clients without expectation of compensation. All that we expect on that initial project is to be included as an author on any papers or abstracts produced by the free initial consultation period.

Consultation for grant submission where grant dollars are allocated to the BSDDS core is always a free service.

As relationships with researchers grow, it’s expected that the researchers will help support the BSDDS core grow by either a fee-for-hour or % effort support going forward (via grants or departmental support). This can be discussed on a case-by-case basis. Priority will always be given to departments based on financial support of the core. 

We want your support of us to grow as your funding and research grows – so we want to help you get started. We know that as research grows at LSUHSC, the BSDDS core will also need to grow – but we cannot support that growth without first supporting our researchers.

Dr. Chapple’s office is in Louisiana Cancer Research Center Room 610

Email achapp@lsuhsc.edu with a word document containing the following information.

1. A short 1 paragraph explanation of your project
2. Where you are in the process of the project (planning, grant writing, data is collected, revising a paper, etc).
3. Is there a deadline on the project? If YES, what is the date? You might list an abstract submission/etc.
4. What is your availability to meet over the next 5-10 business days (blocks of time, i.e. M 12/18/23 9-11am, 2-4pm; T 12/19/23 2-4pm; TH 12/21/23 8-10am, etc). We’ll meet with you as soon as possible while making sure we keep other deadlines.
5. Any extra things you’d like to think about long term?

Chapple A.G. (2022). Use of Machine Learning Approaches and Statistical Techniques to Adjust for Nonadherence in Randomized Clinical Trials. JAMA Network Open. 5(3):e2143422. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.43422. PMID: 35262723.

Liru, H., Chapple, A.G., Liao, Z., Komaki, R., Thall, P.F., Lin SH. (2016) Bayesian regression analyses of radiation modality effects on pericardial and pleural effusion and survival in esophageal cancer. Journal of Radiation Oncology.  121 (1): 70-74.

Yoo A, Palines PA, Mayo JL, et al. The Impact of Indocyanine Green Angiography on Fat Necrosis in Deep Inferior Epigastric Perforator Flap Breast Reconstruction. Ann Plast Surg. 2022;88(4):415-419. doi:10.1097/SAP.0000000000003021

Scott JL, Lee-Johnson NM, Danos D. Place, Race, and Case: Examining Racialized Economic Segregation and COVID-19 in Louisiana. J racial Ethn Heal disparities. 2022. doi:10.1007/S40615-022-01265-Y

Christensen, B.J., Chapple, A.G., King, B.J. (2018). How much weight loss can be expected after treating mandibular fractures? Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.

Hossain FM, Danos DM, Fu Q, et al. Association of Obesity and Diabetes With the Incidence of Breast Cancer in Louisiana. Am J Prev Med. 2022;63(1 Suppl 1):S83-S92. doi:10.1016/J.AMEPRE.2022.02.017

Peak, T., Su, Y., Chapple, A.G., Chryr,, J., Pollack, J., Deep, G. (2019). Syntaxin 6: A novel predictive and prognostic biomarker in papillary renal cell carcinoma. Scientific Reports. 9 (1): 3146.

Cameron JE, Dennis DC, Herrel NR, Chapple A.G., and Hagensee ME. (2020) Risk of abnormal cervical cytology in HIV-infected women testing positive for both human papillomavirus and Epstein-Barr virus in genital tract specimens. Cancer Causes and Control. 31(4):365-375.

Denstel KD, Beyl RA, Danos DM, et al. An examination of the relationships between the neighborhood social environment, adiposity, and cardiometabolic disease risk in adolescence: a cross-sectional study. BMC Public Health. 2023;23(1):1692. Published 2023 Sep 1. doi:10.1186/s12889-023-16580-0

Silver, V., Chapple, A.G., Feibus, A.H., Beckford, J., Halapin, N.A., Barua, D., Gordon, A., Baumgartner, W., Vignes, S., Clark, C., Kamboj, S., Lim, S.C., Mackey, S.P., Seal, P.S., Kanter, J.M., Bell, C., & Clement, M.E. (2020). Clinical Characteristics and Outcomes Based on Race of Hospitalized Patients With COVID-19 in a New Orleans Cohort. Open forum infectious diseases, 7(9), ofaa339. https://doi.org/10.1093/ofid/ofaa339

Cavalea A, et al. Comparison of Rampage and Non-Rampage Mass Shootings in the U.S.: a 5-year demographic analysis. Injury. Revised April 2023.

Hoffseth KF, Simkin J, Busse E, Stewart K, Watt J, Chapple A, Hargrove A, Sammarco MC. (2020) A New Approach to Analyzing Regenerated Bone Quality in the Mouse Digit Amputation Model using Semi-automatic Processing of microCT Data. Bone. 2020 Dec 1:115776. doi: 10.1016/j.bone.2020.115776 PMID: 33276153.

Lau FH, Hoffman RD, Danos D, et al. Regenerative vs flap-based limb salvage: a multi-centered, prospective, randomized controlled trial [published online ahead of print, 2023 Feb 16]. Regen Med. 2023;10.2217/rme-2022-0147. doi:10.2217/rme-2022-0147

Salomon, B., Krause, P. C., Dasa, V., Shi, L., Jones, D., & Chapple, A.G. (2021). The Impact of Hepatitis C and Liver Disease on Risk of Complications After Total Hip and Knee Arthroplasty: Analysis of Administrative Data From Louisiana and Texas. Arthroplasty today, 7, 200–207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.artd.2020.12.016

Mikhail AR, Williams RA, Son LS, et al. Total Parathyroidectomy Without Autotransplantation for ESRD Patients with Secondary Hyperparathyroidism; an Effective Alternative [published online ahead of print, 2022 Dec 27]. Am Surg. 2022;31348221148364. doi:10.1177/00031348221148364

Buzhardt, S, Chapple, A.G., LeMoine, F, McCune, K, Moore, F, Sutton, E (2021). Surgical Site Infection Risk in Cesarean Delivery Patients with Obesity Following Negative Pressure Wound Therapy: A Retrospective Cohort Study. Surgery. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.surg.2021.02.056

Joslyn, P., Rosenbaum, C., Chapple, A.G. et al (2021). The effects of maternal hypertension on the early neonatal platelet count. J Perinatol. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41372-021-01278-1

Lau FH, Powell CE, Adonecchi G, et al. Pilot phase results of a prospective, randomized controlled trial of narrowband ultraviolet B phototherapy in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Exp Dermatol. 2022;31(7). doi:10.1111/EXD.14617

Beiter K, Danos D, Conrad E, et al. PTSD treatment reduces risk of trauma recidivism in a diverse community at a safety-net hospital: A propensity score analysis of data from a level one trauma center. Injury. 2022;53(7):2493-2500. doi:10.1016/J.INJURY.2022.05.026

Sanchez, M., Chapple, A.G., et al. (2022).  Increased Inflammatory Low-Density Neutrophils in Severe Obesity and Effect of Bariatric Surgery: Results from case-control and prospective cohort studies. March 02. eBioMedicine. Doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ebiom.2022.103910

Yoo A, Short C, Lopez MJ, et al. Dehydrated Human Amniotic-Chorionic Membrane Reduces Incisional Hernia Formation in an Animal Model. J Surg Res. 2022;270:477-485. doi:10.1016/J.JSS.2021.10.019