Beyond estimation: broadening the dynamic treatment regime literature

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Dynamic treatment regimes are a statistical way of deciding what decisions to make. They originate in medicine, where tailoring treatments to individual patients - rather than prescribing the same drug to everyone with a particular disease - can lead to improved health. This is because the best treatment for two different patients may not be the same, such as older patients faring better than younger ones using a certain medication, or patients having varying degrees of tolerance to side-effects. By analyzing data we can find the best dynamic treatment regime for each patient: a set of rules that tell us the best treatment to prescribe at any given time based on an individual patient's characteristics. What's more, the potential of dynamic treatment regimes is not limited to medicine. In any situation where a sequence of decisions is made (such as steps in an engineering process, or decisions over time in a scientific experiment), we can analyze data to work out the best actions to take.