Beyond the ATE: Interpretable Modelling of Treatment Effects over Dose and Time

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Piskorz, Julianna, Kacprzyk, Krzysztof, Amad, Harry, van der Schaar, Mihaela
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Piskorz, Julianna
Kacprzyk, Krzysztof
Amad, Harry
van der Schaar, Mihaela
author_facet Piskorz, Julianna
Kacprzyk, Krzysztof
Amad, Harry
van der Schaar, Mihaela
contents The Average Treatment Effect (ATE) is a foundational metric in causal inference, widely used to assess intervention efficacy in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). However, in many applications -- particularly in healthcare -- this static summary fails to capture the nuanced dynamics of treatment effects that vary with both dose and time. We propose a framework for modelling treatment effect trajectories as smooth surfaces over dose and time, enabling the extraction of clinically actionable insights such as onset time, peak effect, and duration of benefit. To ensure interpretability, robustness, and verifiability -- key requirements in high-stakes domains -- we adapt SemanticODE, a recent framework for interpretable trajectory modelling, to the causal setting where treatment effects are never directly observed. Our approach decouples the estimation of trajectory shape from the specification of clinically relevant properties (e.g., maxima, inflection points), supporting domain-informed priors, post-hoc editing, and transparent analysis. We show that our method yields accurate, interpretable, and editable models of treatment dynamics, facilitating both rigorous causal analysis and practical decision-making.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_07271
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Beyond the ATE: Interpretable Modelling of Treatment Effects over Dose and Time
Piskorz, Julianna
Kacprzyk, Krzysztof
Amad, Harry
van der Schaar, Mihaela
Machine Learning
The Average Treatment Effect (ATE) is a foundational metric in causal inference, widely used to assess intervention efficacy in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). However, in many applications -- particularly in healthcare -- this static summary fails to capture the nuanced dynamics of treatment effects that vary with both dose and time. We propose a framework for modelling treatment effect trajectories as smooth surfaces over dose and time, enabling the extraction of clinically actionable insights such as onset time, peak effect, and duration of benefit. To ensure interpretability, robustness, and verifiability -- key requirements in high-stakes domains -- we adapt SemanticODE, a recent framework for interpretable trajectory modelling, to the causal setting where treatment effects are never directly observed. Our approach decouples the estimation of trajectory shape from the specification of clinically relevant properties (e.g., maxima, inflection points), supporting domain-informed priors, post-hoc editing, and transparent analysis. We show that our method yields accurate, interpretable, and editable models of treatment dynamics, facilitating both rigorous causal analysis and practical decision-making.
title Beyond the ATE: Interpretable Modelling of Treatment Effects over Dose and Time
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.07271