Phase-type frailty models: A flexible approach to modeling unobserved heterogeneity in survival analysis

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Yslas, Jorge
Format: Preprint
Published: 2021
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author Yslas, Jorge
author_facet Yslas, Jorge
contents Frailty models are essential tools in survival analysis for addressing unobserved heterogeneity and random effects in the data. These models incorporate a random effect, the frailty, which is assumed to impact the hazard rate multiplicatively. In this paper, we introduce a novel class of frailty models in both univariate and multivariate settings, using phase-type distributions as the underlying frailty specification. We investigate the properties of these phase-type frailty models and develop expectation-maximization algorithms for their maximum-likelihood estimation. In particular, we show that the resulting model shares similarities with the Gamma frailty model, has closed-form expressions for its functionals, and can approximate any other frailty model. Through a series of simulated and real-life numerical examples, we demonstrate the effectiveness and versatility of the proposed models in addressing unobserved heterogeneity in survival analysis.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2103_13142
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Phase-type frailty models: A flexible approach to modeling unobserved heterogeneity in survival analysis
Yslas, Jorge
Statistics Theory
Probability
Frailty models are essential tools in survival analysis for addressing unobserved heterogeneity and random effects in the data. These models incorporate a random effect, the frailty, which is assumed to impact the hazard rate multiplicatively. In this paper, we introduce a novel class of frailty models in both univariate and multivariate settings, using phase-type distributions as the underlying frailty specification. We investigate the properties of these phase-type frailty models and develop expectation-maximization algorithms for their maximum-likelihood estimation. In particular, we show that the resulting model shares similarities with the Gamma frailty model, has closed-form expressions for its functionals, and can approximate any other frailty model. Through a series of simulated and real-life numerical examples, we demonstrate the effectiveness and versatility of the proposed models in addressing unobserved heterogeneity in survival analysis.
title Phase-type frailty models: A flexible approach to modeling unobserved heterogeneity in survival analysis
topic Statistics Theory
Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.13142