it's useful to have the background in biostats/epidemiology prior to med school, but definitely not necessary. i'm not in med school yet, but from what i've seen, the level of biostats that you're taught there is pretty basic and not difficult--it's just designed to familiarize you with basic epidemiological study designs and calculations. any background in statistics of any sort will be useful, but again, it's not crucial. personally, if i were going to take some time to get a jump-start on med school, i would focus on some of the basic sciences.