636
Views
8
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Research Article

Targeted Learning: Toward a Future Informed by Real-World Evidence

ORCID Icon, , , , &
Pages 11-25 | Received 07 Jun 2022, Accepted 14 Feb 2023, Published online: 15 Mar 2023

References

  • Balzer, L. B., Zheng, W., van der Laan, M. J., and Petersen, M. L. (2019), “A New Approach to Hierarchical Data Analysis: Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation for the Causal Effect of a Cluster-Level Exposure,” Statistical Methods in Medical Research, 28, 1761–1780. DOI: 10.1177/0962280218774936.
  • Bang, H., and Robins, J. M. (2005), “Doubly Robust Estimation in Missing Data and Causal Inference Models,” Biometrics, 61, 962–973. DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0420.2005.00377.x.
  • Carrell, D., Gruber, S., Floyd, J. S., Bann, M. A., Cushing-Haugen, K. L., Johnson, R. L., Graham, V., Cronkite, D. J., Hazlehurst, B. L., Felcher, A. H., Bejin, C. A., Kennedy, A., Shinde, M., Karami, S., Ma, Y., Stojanovic, D., Zhao, Y., Ball, R., and Nelson, J. (in press), “Improving Methods of Identifying Anaphylaxis for Medical Product Safety Surveillance Using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning,” American Journal of Epidemiology.
  • Chipman, H., George, E. I., and McCulloch, R. E. (2010), “BART: Bayesian Additive Regression Trees,” The Annals of Applied Statistics, 4, 266–298. DOI: 10.1214/09-AOAS285.
  • Cole, S. R., and Hernán, M. A. (2008), “Constructing Inverse Probability Weights for Marginal Structural Models,” American Journal of Epidemiology, 168, 656–664. DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwn164.
  • Concato, J., Stein, P., Dal Pan, G. J., Ball, R., and Corrigan-Curay, J. (2020), “Randomized, Observational, Interventional, and Real-World—What’s in a Name?” Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety, 29, 1514–1517. DOI: 10.1002/pds.5123.
  • Corrigan-Curay, J., Sacks, L., and Woodcock, J. (2018), “Real-World Evidence and Real-World Data for Evaluating Drug Safety and Effectiveness,” JAMA, 320, 867–868. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2018.10136.
  • Díaz, I., and van der Laan, M. J. (2013), “Sensitivity Analysis for Causal Inference under Unmeasured Confounding and Measurement Error Problems,” The International Journal of Biostatistics, 9, 149–160. DOI: 10.1515/ijb-2013-0004.
  • FDA (2018), “Framework for FDA’s Real-world Evidence Program,” Available at https://www.fda.gov/media/120060/download.
  • FDA (2020), “21st Century Cures Act,” Available at https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/selected-amendments-fdc-act/21st-century-cures-act
  • FDA (2021), “Real-World Data: Assessing Electronic Health Records and Medical Claims Data To Support Regulatory Decision-Making for Drug and Biological Products,” Available at https://www.fda.gov/regulatory-information/search-fda-guidance-documents/real-world-data-assessing-electronic-health-records-and-medical-claims-data-support-regulatory.
  • Franklin, J. M., Schneeweiss, S., Polinski, J. M., and Rassen, J. A. (2014), “Plasmode Simulation for the Evaluation of Pharmacoepidemiologic Methods in Complex Healthcare Databases,” Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, 72, 219–226. DOI: 10.1016/j.csda.2013.10.018.
  • Friedman, J., Hastie, T., and Tibshirani, R. (2010), “Regularization Paths for Generalized Linear Models via Coordinate Descent,” Journal of Statistical Software, 33, 1–22.
  • Friedman, J., Hastie, T., and Tibshirani, R. (2001), The Elements of Statistical Learning, Springer Series in Statistics, New York: Springer.
  • Gruber, S., Krakower, D., Menchaca, J. T., Hsu, K., Hawrusik, R., Maro, J. C., Cocoros, N. M., Kruskal, B. A., Wilson, I. B., Mayer, K. H., and Klompas, M. (2020), “Using Electronic Health Records to Identify Candidates for Human Immunodeficiency Virus Pre-exposure Prophylaxis: An Application of Super Learning to Risk Prediction When the Outcome is Rare,” Statistics in Medicine, 39, 3059–3073. DOI: 10.1002/sim.8591.
  • Gruber, S., Lee H., Phillips, R., Ho, M., and van der Laan, M. (2022a), “Developing a Targeted Learning-Based Statistical Analysis Plan,” Statistics in Biopharmaceutical Research. DOI: 10.1080/19466315.2022.2116104.
  • Gruber, S., Phillips, R., Lee, H., and van der Laan, M. (2022b), “Data-Adaptive Selection of the Propensity Score Truncation Level for Inverse Probability Weighted and Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimators of Marginal Point Treatment Effects,” American Journal of Epidemiology, 191, 1640–1651. DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwac087.
  • Gruber, S., and van der Laan, M. (2012), “tmle: An R Package for Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation,” Journal of Statistical Software, 51, 1–35. DOI: 10.18637/jss.v051.i13.
  • Hansen, B. B. (2004), “Full Matching in an Observational Study of Coaching for the SAT,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 99, 609–618. DOI: 10.1198/016214504000000647.
  • Hastie, T. (2019), gam: Generalized Additive Models. R package version 1.16.1. Available at https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=gam.
  • Hernán, M. A., Brumback, B., and Robins, J. M. (2000), “Marginal Structural Models to Estimate the Causal Effect of Zidovudine on the Survival of HIV-Positive Men,” Epidemiology, 11, 561–570. DOI: 10.1097/00001648-200009000-00012.
  • Hernán, M. A., and Robins, J. M. (2020), Causal Inference: What If, Boca Raton: Chapman & Hall/CRC.
  • Ho, D. E., Imai, K., King, G., and Stuart, E. A. (2011), “MatchIt: Nonparametric Preprocessing for Parametric Causal Inference,” Journal of Statistical Software, 42, 1–28. DOI: 10.18637/jss.
  • Ho, M., van der Laan, M., Lee, H., Chen, J., Lee, K., Fang, Y., He, W., Irony, T., Jiang, Q., Lin, X., Meng, Z., Mishra-Kalyani, P., Rockhold, F., Song, Y., Wang, H., and White, R. (2021), “The Current Landscape in Biostatistics of Real-World Data and Evidence: Causal Inference Frameworks for Study Design and Analysis,” Statistics in Biopharmaceutical Research, 15, 43–56. DOI: 10.1080/19466315.2021.1883475.
  • ICH (2020), “ICH E9(R1) Addendum to Statistical Principles for Clinical Trials on Choosing Appropriate Estimands and Defining Sensitivity Analyses in Clinical Trials,” Available at https://www.ich.org/page/efficacy-guidelines.
  • Imai, K., and Ratkovic, M. (2013), “Covariate Balancing Propensity Score. Covariate Balancing Propensity Score,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series B, 76, 243–263. DOI: 10.1111/rssb.12027.
  • International Stroke Trial Collaborative Group. (1997), “The International Stroke Trial (IST): A Randomised Trial of Aspirin, Subcutaneous Heparin, both, or Neither among 19435 Patients with Acute Ischaemic Stroke,” The Lancet, 349, 1569–1581.
  • Ju, C., Wyss, R., Franklin, J. M., Schneeweiss, S., Häggström, J., and van der Laan, M. J. (2017), “Collaborative-Controlled LASSO for Constructing Propensity Score-based Estimators in High-Dimensional Data,” Statistical Methods in Medical Research, 28, 1044–1063. DOI: 10.1177/0962280217744588.
  • Kahale, L. A., Diab, B., Khamis, A. M., Chang, Y., Cruz Lopes, L., Agarwal, A., Li, L., Mustafa, R. A., Koujanian, S., Waziry, R., Busse, J. W., Dakik, A., Guyatt, G., and Aki, E. A. (2019), “Potentially Missing Data are Considerably More Frequent than Definitely Missing Data: A Methodological Survey of 638 Randomized Controlled Trials,” Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 106, 18–31. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2018.10.001.
  • Kempker, R. R., Mikiashvili, L., Zhao, Y., Benkeser, D., Barbakadze, K., Bablishvili, N., Avaliani, Z., Peloquin, C. A., Blumberg, H. M., and Kipiani, M. (2020), “Clinical Outcomes Among Patients With Drug-resistant Tuberculosis Receiving Bedaquiline- or Delamanid-Containing Regimens,” Clinical Infectious Diseases: An Official Publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, 71, 2336–2344. DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciz1107.
  • Kreif, N., Tran, L., Grieve, R., De Stavola, B., Tasker, R. C., and Petersen, M. (2017), “Estimating the Comparative Effectiveness of Feeding Interventions in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit: A Demonstration of Longitudinal Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation,” American Journal of Epidemiology, 186, 1370–1379. DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwx213.
  • Lendle, S. D., Schwab, J., Petersen, M. L., and van der Laan, M. J. (2017), “ltmle: An R Package Implementing Targeted Minimum Loss-Based Estimation for Longitudinal Data,” Journal of Statistical Software, 81, 1–21. DOI: 10.18637/jss.v081.i01.
  • Lendle, S. D., Fireman, B., and van der Laan, M. J. (2013), “Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation in Safety Analysis,” Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 66, S91–S98. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2013.02.017.
  • Ling, A. Y., Montez-Rath, M. E., Mathur, M. B., Kapphahn, K., and Desai, M. (2019), “How to Apply Multiple Imputation in Propensity Score Matching with Partially Observed Confounders: A Simulation Study and Practical Recommendations,” arXiv Preprint arXiv:1904.07408.
  • Pearl, J. (2009), Causality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Pearl, J. (2010), “An Introduction to Causal Inference,” The International Journal of Biostatistics, 6, Article 7. DOI: 10.2202/1557-4679.1203.
  • Petersen, M., Schwab, J., Gruber, S., Blaser, N., Schomaker, M., and van der Laan, M. (2014), “Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Dynamic and Static Longitudinal Marginal Structural Working Models,” Journal of Causal Inference, 2, 147–185. DOI: 10.1515/jci-2013-0007.
  • Petersen, M. L., and van der Laan, M. J. (2014), “Causal Models and Learning from Data: Integrating Causal Modeling and Statistical Estimation,” Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.), 25, 418–426. DOI: 10.1097/EDE.0000000000000078.
  • Pirracchio, R., Petersen, M. L., Carone, M., Rigon, M. R., Chevret, S., and van der Laan, M. J. (2015), “Mortality Prediction in Intensive Care Units with the Super ICU Learner Algorithm (SICULA): A Population-based Study,” The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, 3, 42–52. DOI: 10.1016/S2213-2600(14)70239-5.
  • Polley, E., LeDell, E., Kennedy, C., and van der Laan, M. (2019), SuperLearner: Super Learner Prediction. R package version 2.0-26. Available at https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=SuperLearner.
  • Porter, K. E., Gruber, S., van der Laan, M. J., and Sekhon, J. S. (2011), “The Relative Performance of Targeted Maximum Likelihood Estimators,” The International Journal of Biostatistics, 7, 1–34. DOI: 10.2202/1557-4679.1308.
  • R Core Team (2020), R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Available at http://www.R-project.org/.
  • Ramsahai, R. R., Grieve, R., and Sekhon, J. S. (2011), “Extending Iterative Matching Methods: An Approach to Improving Covariate Balance That Allows Prioritisation,” Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology, 11, 95–114. DOI: 10.1007/s10742-011-0075-5.
  • Rosenbaum, P. R., and Rubin, D. B. (1983), “The Central Role of the Propensity Score in Observational Studies for Causal Effects,” Biometrika, 70, 41–55. DOI: 10.1093/biomet/70.1.41.
  • Rosenblum, M., and van der Laan, M. J. (2010), “Simple, Efficient Estimators of Treatment Effects in Randomized Trials using Generalized Linear Models to Leverage Baseline Variables,” The International Journal of Biostatistics, 6, 1–41. DOI: 10.2202/1557-4679.1138.
  • Sandercock, P., Niewada, M., and Czlonkowska, A. (2011), International Stroke Trial database (version 2), University of Edinburgh. Department of Clinical Neurosciences. DOI: 10.7488/ds/104.
  • Simon, G. E., Bindman, A. B., Dreyer, N. A., Platt, R., Watanabe, J. H., Horberg, M., Hernandez, A., and Califf, R. M. (2022), “When Can We Trust Real-World Data To Evaluate New Medical Treatments?,” Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 111, 24–29. DOI: 10.1002/cpt.2252.
  • Stuart, E. A. (2010), “Matching Methods for Causal Inference: A Review and a Look Forward,” Statistical Science, 25, 1–21. DOI: 10.1214/09-STS313.
  • Tackney, M. S., Morris, T., White, I., Leyrat, C., Diaz-Ordaz, K., and Williamson, E. (2023), “A Comparison of Covariate Adjustment Approaches Under Model Misspecification In Individually Randomized Trials,” Trials, 24, 1–8. DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-1053600/v1.
  • van der Laan, M. J., and Robins, J. (2003), Unified Methods for Censored Longitudinal Data and Causality, New York: Springer.
  • van der Laan, M. J., and Rose, S. (2011), Targeted Learning: Causal Inference for Observational and Experimental Data, New York: Springer.
  • VanderWeele, T., and Ding, P. (2017), “Sensitivity Analysis in Observational Research: Introducing the E-value,” Annals of Internal Medicine, 167, 268–274. DOI: 10.7326/M16-2607.
  • Vickers, A. J., and McCarney, R. (2003), “Use of a Single Global Assessment to Reduce Missing Data in a Clinical Trial with Follow-Up at One Year,” Controlled Clinical Trials, 24, 731–735. DOI: 10.10.16/j.cct.2003.10.001.
  • Vickers, A. J., Rees, R. W., Zollman, C. E., McCarney, R., Smith, C., Ellis, N., Fisher, P., and Van Haselen, R. (2004), “Acupuncture for Chronic Headache in Primary Care: Large, Pragmatic, Randomised Trial,” BMJ, 328, 744. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.38029.421863.EB.
  • Vickers, A. J. (2006), “Whose Data Set Is It Anyway? Sharing Raw Data from Randomized Trials,” Trials, 7, 1–6. DOI: 10.1186/1745-6215-7-15.
  • Zeileis, A. (2004), “Econometric Computing with HC and HAC Covariance Matrix Estimators,” Journal of Statistical Software, 11, 1–17. DOI: 10.18637/jss.v011.i10.
  • Zeileis, A., Köll, S., and Graham, N. (2020), “Various Versatile Variances: An Object-Oriented Implementation of Clustered Covariances in R,” Journal of Statistical Software, 95, 1–36. DOI: 10.18637/jss.v095.i01.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.