Applied Statistics and Data Science Seminar on Monday, November 6, 2023

Title: On the Development and Validation of Risk Prediction Models for Rare Outcomes

Venue and time: ISRT, 2:00 pm

Presenter:  Dr. Md. Shafiqur Rahman, Professor of Applied Statistics, ISRT

Abstract:

Risk prediction models are commonly developed in clinical research to predict patients’ future health outcomes such as death or state of illness due to disease and/or to classify patients into clinical risk groups (low, medium, and high). Predictions from these models are useful to make joint decisions with both patient and clinician for future courses of treatment. However, clinicians will be reluctant to use these models unless they can trust their predictions. To maximize the prediction accuracy and clinical utility of these models, it is essential to ensure that they are rigorously developed, validated, and evaluated. However, the standard process of model development and validation faces serious problems when the outcome is rare. This talk discusses the methodological challenges and possible solutions of model development and validation for data with rare outcomes. Issues are discussed providing separate examples of predictive models for binary and survival data with rare outcomes and illustrating them using both simulated and practical data.