1. Clinical epidemiology applies epidemiological principles and methods to address questions relevant to patient care in a multidisciplinary way. 2. The epidemiological method provides a framework for designing and interpreting applied clinical research by establishing an occurrence relationship between determinants and outcomes within a clinical domain. 3. The main challenges in clinical practice that clinical epidemiology focuses on are explanation of a patient's illness, prediction of the illness's future course, and informing treatment decisions; and the appropriate study design depends on whether the research question is diagnostic, etiological, prognostic, or related to intervention.