Empirical Likelihood Methods in Biomedicine and Health provides a compendium of nonparametric likelihood statistical techniques in the perspective of health research applications. It includes detailed descriptions of the theoretical underpinnings of recently developed empirical likelihood-based methods. The emphasis throughout is on the application of the methods to the health sciences, with worked examples using real data. Provides a systematic overview of novel empirical likelihood techniques. Presents a good balance of theory, methods, and applications. Features detailed worked examples to illustrate the application of the methods. Includes R code for implementation. The book material is attractive and easily understandable to scientists who are new to the research area and may attract statisticians interested in learning more about advanced nonparametric topics including various modern empirical likelihood methods. The book can be used by graduate students majoring in biostatistics, or in a related field, particularly for those who are interested in nonparametric methods with direct applications in Biomedicine.

Empirical Likelihood Methods in Biomedicine and Health provides a compendium of nonparametric likelihood statistical techniques in the perspective of health research applications. It includes detailed descriptions of the theoretical underpinnings of recently developed empirical likelihood-based methods. The emphasis throughout is on the application of the methods to the health sciences, with worked examples using real data. Provides a systematic overview of novel empirical likelihood techniques. Presents a good balance of theory, methods, and applications. Features detailed worked examples to illustrate the application of the methods. Includes R code for implementation. The book material is attractive and easily understandable to scientists who are new to the research area and may attract statisticians interested in learning more about advanced nonparametric topics including various modern empirical likelihood methods. The book can be used by graduate students majoring in biostatistics, or in a related field, particularly for those who are interested in nonparametric methods with direct applications in Biomedicine.

Empirical Likelihood Method in Survival Analysis explains how to use the empirical likelihood method for right censored survival data. The author uses R for calculating empirical likelihood and includes many worked out examples with the associated R code. The datasets and code are available for download on his website and CRAN. The book focuses on all the standard survival analysis topics treated with empirical likelihood, including hazard functions, cumulative distribution functions, analysis of the Cox model, and computation of empirical likelihood for censored data. It also covers semi-parametric accelerated failure time models, the optimality of confidence regions derived from empirical likelihood or plug-in empirical likelihood ratio tests, and several empirical likelihood confidence band results. While survival analysis is a classic area of statistical study, the empirical likelihood methodology has only recently been developed. Until now, just one book was available on empirical likelihood and most statistical software did not include empirical likelihood procedures. Addressing this shortfall, this book provides the functions to calculate the empirical likelihood ratio in survival analysis as well as functions related to the empirical likelihood analysis of the Cox regression model and other hazard regression models.

Healthcare is important to everyone, yet large variations in its quality have been well documented both between and within many countries. With demand and expenditure rising, it’s more crucial than ever to know how well the healthcare system and all its components – from staff member to regional network – are performing. This requires data, which inevitably differ in form and quality. It also requires statistical methods, the output of which needs to be presented so that it can be understood by whoever needs it to make decisions. Statistical Methods for Healthcare Performance Monitoring covers measuring quality, types of data, risk adjustment, defining good and bad performance, statistical monitoring, presenting the results to different audiences and evaluating the monitoring system itself. Using examples from around the world, it brings all the issues and perspectives together in a largely non-technical way for clinicians, managers and methodologists. Statistical Methods for Healthcare Performance Monitoring is aimed at statisticians and researchers who need to know how to measure and compare performance, health service regulators, health service managers with responsibilities for monitoring performance, and quality improvement scientists, including those involved in clinical audits.

Statistical Testing Strategies in the Health Sciences provides a compendium of statistical approaches for decision making, ranging from graphical methods and classical procedures through computationally intensive bootstrap strategies to advanced empirical likelihood techniques. It bridges the gap between theoretical statistical methods and practical procedures applied to the planning and analysis of health-related experiments. The book is organized primarily based on the type of questions to be answered by inference procedures or according to the general type of mathematical derivation. It establishes the theoretical framework for each method, with a substantial amount of chapter notes included for additional reference. It then focuses on the practical application for each concept, providing real-world examples that can be easily implemented using corresponding statistical software code in R and SAS. The book also explains the basic elements and methods for constructing correct and powerful statistical decision-making processes to be adapted for complex statistical applications. With techniques spanning robust statistical methods to more computationally intensive approaches, this book shows how to apply correct and efficient testing mechanisms to various problems encountered in medical and epidemiological studies, including clinical trials. Theoretical statisticians, medical researchers, and other practitioners in epidemiology and clinical research will appreciate the book’s novel theoretical and applied results. The book is also suitable for graduate students in biostatistics, epidemiology, health-related sciences, and areas pertaining to formal decision-making mechanisms.

Comparative effectiveness research (CER) is the generation and synthesis of evidence that compares the benefits and harms of alternative methods to prevent, diagnose, treat, and monitor a clinical condition or to improve the delivery of care (IOM 2009). CER is conducted to develop evidence that will aid patients, clinicians, purchasers, and health policy makers in making informed decisions at both the individual and population levels. CER encompasses a very broad range of types of studies—experimental, observational, prospective, retrospective, and research synthesis. This volume covers the main areas of quantitative methodology for the design and analysis of CER studies. The volume has four major sections—causal inference; clinical trials; research synthesis; and specialized topics. The audience includes CER methodologists, quantitative-trained researchers interested in CER, and graduate students in statistics, epidemiology, and health services and outcomes research. The book assumes a masters-level course in regression analysis and familiarity with clinical research.

Proven Methods for Big Data Analysis As big data has become standard in many application areas, challenges have arisen related to methodology and software development, including how to discover meaningful patterns in the vast amounts of data. Addressing these problems, Applied Biclustering Methods for Big and High-Dimensional Data Using R shows how to apply biclustering methods to find local patterns in a big data matrix. The book presents an overview of data analysis using biclustering methods from a practical point of view. Real case studies in drug discovery, genetics, marketing research, biology, toxicity, and sports illustrate the use of several biclustering methods. References to technical details of the methods are provided for readers who wish to investigate the full theoretical background. All the methods are accompanied with R examples that show how to conduct the analyses. The examples, software, and other materials are available on a supplementary website.