Training and Validating a Treatment Recommender with Partial Verification Evidence

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Unnikrishnan, Vishnu, Puga, Clara, Schleicher, Miro, Niemann, Uli, Langguth, Berthod, Schoisswohl, Stefan, Mazurek, Birgit, Cima, Rilana, Lopez-Escamez, Jose Antonio, Kikidis, Dimitris, Vellidou, Eleftheria, Pryss, Ruediger, Schlee, Winfried, Spiliopoulou, Myra
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Unnikrishnan, Vishnu
Puga, Clara
Schleicher, Miro
Niemann, Uli
Langguth, Berthod
Schoisswohl, Stefan
Mazurek, Birgit
Cima, Rilana
Lopez-Escamez, Jose Antonio
Kikidis, Dimitris
Vellidou, Eleftheria
Pryss, Ruediger
Schlee, Winfried
Spiliopoulou, Myra
author_facet Unnikrishnan, Vishnu
Puga, Clara
Schleicher, Miro
Niemann, Uli
Langguth, Berthod
Schoisswohl, Stefan
Mazurek, Birgit
Cima, Rilana
Lopez-Escamez, Jose Antonio
Kikidis, Dimitris
Vellidou, Eleftheria
Pryss, Ruediger
Schlee, Winfried
Spiliopoulou, Myra
contents Current clinical decision support systems (DSS) are trained and validated on observational data from the target clinic. This is problematic for treatments validated in a randomized clinical trial (RCT), but not yet introduced in any clinic. In this work, we report on a method for training and validating the DSS using the RCT data. The key challenges we address are of missingness -- missing rationale for treatment assignment (the assignment is at random), and missing verification evidence, since the effectiveness of a treatment for a patient can only be verified (ground truth) for treatments what were actually assigned to a patient. We use data from a multi-armed RCT that investigated the effectiveness of single- and combination- treatments for 240+ tinnitus patients recruited and treated in 5 clinical centers. To deal with the 'missing rationale' challenge, we re-model the target variable (outcome) in order to suppress the effect of the randomly-assigned treatment, and control on the effect of treatment in general. Our methods are also robust to missing values in features and with a small number of patients per RCT arm. We deal with 'missing verification evidence' by using counterfactual treatment verification, which compares the effectiveness of the DSS recommendations to the effectiveness of the RCT assignments when they are aligned v/s not aligned. We demonstrate that our approach leverages the RCT data for learning and verification, by showing that the DSS suggests treatments that improve the outcome. The results are limited through the small number of patients per treatment; while our ensemble is designed to mitigate this effect, the predictive performance of the methods is affected by the smallness of the data. We provide a basis for the establishment of decision supporting routines on treatments that have been tested in RCTs but have not yet been deployed clinically.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_06654
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Training and Validating a Treatment Recommender with Partial Verification Evidence
Unnikrishnan, Vishnu
Puga, Clara
Schleicher, Miro
Niemann, Uli
Langguth, Berthod
Schoisswohl, Stefan
Mazurek, Birgit
Cima, Rilana
Lopez-Escamez, Jose Antonio
Kikidis, Dimitris
Vellidou, Eleftheria
Pryss, Ruediger
Schlee, Winfried
Spiliopoulou, Myra
Machine Learning
Methodology
Current clinical decision support systems (DSS) are trained and validated on observational data from the target clinic. This is problematic for treatments validated in a randomized clinical trial (RCT), but not yet introduced in any clinic. In this work, we report on a method for training and validating the DSS using the RCT data. The key challenges we address are of missingness -- missing rationale for treatment assignment (the assignment is at random), and missing verification evidence, since the effectiveness of a treatment for a patient can only be verified (ground truth) for treatments what were actually assigned to a patient. We use data from a multi-armed RCT that investigated the effectiveness of single- and combination- treatments for 240+ tinnitus patients recruited and treated in 5 clinical centers. To deal with the 'missing rationale' challenge, we re-model the target variable (outcome) in order to suppress the effect of the randomly-assigned treatment, and control on the effect of treatment in general. Our methods are also robust to missing values in features and with a small number of patients per RCT arm. We deal with 'missing verification evidence' by using counterfactual treatment verification, which compares the effectiveness of the DSS recommendations to the effectiveness of the RCT assignments when they are aligned v/s not aligned. We demonstrate that our approach leverages the RCT data for learning and verification, by showing that the DSS suggests treatments that improve the outcome. The results are limited through the small number of patients per treatment; while our ensemble is designed to mitigate this effect, the predictive performance of the methods is affected by the smallness of the data. We provide a basis for the establishment of decision supporting routines on treatments that have been tested in RCTs but have not yet been deployed clinically.
title Training and Validating a Treatment Recommender with Partial Verification Evidence
topic Machine Learning
Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.06654