idmTPreg: Regression Model for Progressive Illness Death Data

Abstract

The progressive illness-death model is frequently used in medical applications. For example, the model may be used to describe the disease process in cancer studies. We have developed a new R package called idmTPreg to estimate regression coefficients in datasets that can be described by the progressive illness-death model. The motivation for the development of the package is a recent contribution that enables the estimation of possibly time-varying covariate effects on the transition probabilities for a progressive illness-death data. The main feature of the package is that it befits both non-Markov and Markov progressive illness-death data. The package implements the introduced estimators obtained using a direct binomial regression approach. Also, variance estimates and confidence bands are implemented in the package. This article presents guidelines for the use of the package.