Students have to attend the „Propedeutics” offered at MUW to acquire basic biomedical knowledge, in particular regarding Neuroscience, Genetics, “Omics”, and Mechanisms of the Cell.

The 2 SWS of compulsory propedeutics (ethics, project management) also apply to our students.

Students graduated in technical or formal sciences (who comprise the “regular clientele” of the course) are required to select 4 SWS out of the medical fields offered within the propedeutics (not Biostatistics, not Basic Natural Sciences).
In accordance with the PhD-regulation this amounts to 6 SWS of propedeutics.

Students with background in technical or formal sciences may select an alternative propedeutics, replacing one of the regular medical propedeutics.
For regular propedeutics see Propedeutics

Depending on their previous knowledge in the field of medical biostatistics applicants may additionally be required to take the propedeutics in "Medical Biostatistics 2" (2 SWS). In case of very limited previous knowledge in this field also "Medical Biostatistics 1" (2 SWS) may be prescribed.

Propedeuticum Medical Biostatistics 1

• Descriptive statistcs: introduction to SPSS, data entry, descriptive statistics and diagrams
• Statistical tests: general principle of statistical testing, t-test, Wilcoxon rank-sum/Mann-Whitney-U-test, chi-square-test, confidence intervals, multiple testing, analysis of variance, correlation, regression, sample size determination

Propedeuticum Medical Biostatistics 2

• General introduction to statistical modeling
• Analysis of binary data: measures for diagnostic tests, ROC curves, risk estimates, logistic regression
• Analysis of survival data: censoring, Kaplan-Meier estimates, Cox regression, assessing model assumptions
• Analysis of repeated measurements: pretest-posttest data, display of repeated measurements, summary measures, repeated-measures ANOVA

These propedeutics are specially designed for PhD-students with biomedical background, aiming at thesis-projects involving mathematical concepts (modeling, image- processing, signal-processing, projects with epidemiologic- or statistical focus).

A-level knowledge in mathematics is a precondition, not more. Starting from that, concepts are explained on a practical basis and related to applications.

These propedeutics are scheduled as a primer just before the basic lectures of each term and will provide an optimum start to grasp the mathematical parts in the basic lectures of this curriculum.

Content, see also

Applicants who did not receive specific training in informatics may be required to additionally take selected courses from the

• bachelor program in “Medical Informatics”, given at the University of Vienna:

or also from the

• master program in “Medical Informatics”, given at MUW:
  https://www.meduniwien.ac.at/web/en/studies-further-education/medical-informatics-master/

For almost every project to be performed within this PhD-program, IT-Skills in one (or more) of the following fields will be required:

• Databank handling
• C++
• Java
• Matlab
• Perl

To avoid redundancy, this program does not offer a compulsory track on programming. However, depending on their skills, applicants may be required to take one of the courses already offered within the informatics curricula at University of Vienna and Technical University, such as:

• Einführung in die Programmierung: C++ Grundlagen (Prozedurales Programmieren, Datentypen, Arrays, Stack, Grundlagen des Hashing, Klassen, Pointer. Praxis: Kleinere Übungsbeispiele, typischer Einführungskurs)
• Datenbanksysteme (Oracle, Datenbankschemata, Relationalalgebra, Normalformen. Praxis: Web Applikation unter Verwendung der Datenbank. Außerdem kleinere Übungsbeispiele zu Relationalalgebra und Normalformen)
• Softwarearchitekturen (PHP, XML, XMLS, XPath, Einführung in Webservices: WSDL/SOAP. Praxis: Webapplikation in PHP, persistente Datenspeicherung mittels XML, Verwendung von Sessions. Außerdem ein Webservice implementieren)

Students are advised to agree with their supervisors and the coordinator on an additional programming propedeutics of 2 SWS or even 4 SWS, which is tailored to the specific needs of their project.

In addition to the medical propedeutics listed on the MedUni- Homepage, we can propose an excellent propedeutics, providing conceptional and easy to understand introductions into biomedicine.

It is particularly suitable for students without any prior background in biomedicine. However, this course is given in german only.

Videolink

Content, see also

The total amount of additional propedeutics in statistics, informatics and programming must not exceed 4 SWS.

After 1 semester of study, our students should have IT-skills qualifying them as valuable employees within projects put forward and financed by clinical partners and biomedical research units of the MUW. This goal is a crucial motivation for additional propedeutics and also part of the strategy to disseminate cooperation and knowledge.