Stochastic Models in Medicine and Life Sciences (IASI-CNR): Introduction

Stochastic Modelling in the biomedical sciences

Physiological processes at several scales (subcellular, cellular, tissue, organ and even population) are inherently stochastic, due to a great variety of noisy factors affecting the phenomenon under investigation.

In fact, deterministic models (representing the vast majority of formalizations hitherto employed in biomedicine) are not realistic, unless the random fluctuations remain small. An incorrect representation, omitting substantial system noise where this is in fact present, leads to poor model identification, biased parameter estimations and inconsistent conclusions.

In recent years there has been an increased emphasis into modeling the randomness inherent in many physiological phenomena, and tools like Stochastic Differential Equations (SDE), or Equações Diferenciais Estocásticas , so far mainly utilized in finance, have found initial application.

Connected with the use of these techniques in representing biomedical processes, are issues such as identifiability, stability or periodicity, which are typically more complicated to study then their deterministic counterparts.

Source: JG. Pires; P Palumbo; A De Gaetano; C. Manes. ‘Stochastic models in medicine and life sciences: mathematical analysis, model identification, validation and stability properties’. Proposal for PhD programme. 2014. Unpublished.

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Jorge Pires

Introduction (STOCHASTIC MODELS IN MEDICINE AND LIFE SCIENCES)

This blog intends to serve as a reference point for the project " STOCHASTIC MODELS IN MEDICINE AND LIFE SCIENCES: mathematical analysis, model identification, validation and stability properties".

It is intended to provide a place where anyone interested on the same can have important details, hopefully updated.

Unfortunately, with technologies, besides responsability, this is never ease to know what to post. Once said Einstein that the secret for the success is hard work, having fun, and keep your mouth shut down. But the same way that someone can purchase a car for myriad reasons such as catching the girls' eyes, a technology readily available can be used for several reasons such as to document an ongoing project, which presumably has its impact.

Regrettably Blogs are not considered references, whenever it is possible, references to published works will be done, hence the interested reader shall be endowed with formal manuscripts.