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Privacy-preserving estimation of an optimal individualized treatment rule: a case study in maximizing time to severe depression-related outcomes

Lifetime Data Analysis (2022)Cite this article

Abstract

Estimating individualized treatment rules—particularly in the context of right-censored outcomes—is challenging because the treatment effect heterogeneity of interest is often small, thus difficult to detect. While this motivates the use of very large datasets such as those from multiple health systems or centres, data privacy may be of concern with participating data centres reluctant to share individual-level data. In this case study on the treatment of depression, we demonstrate an application of distributed regression for privacy protection used in combination with dynamic weighted survival modelling (DWSurv) to estimate an optimal individualized treatment rule whilst obscuring individual-level data. In simulations, we demonstrate the flexibility of this approach to address local treatment practices that may affect confounding, and show that DWSurv retains its double robustness even when performed through a (weighted) distributed regression approach. The work is motivated by, and illustrated with, an analysis of treatment for unipolar depression using the United Kingdom’s Clinical Practice Research Datalink.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Erica E. M. Moodie, Janie Coulombe, Coraline Danieli & Christel Renoux

  2. Centre for Clinical Epidemiology, Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, Jewish General Hospital, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Christel Renoux

  3. Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University, Montréal, QC, Canada

    Christel Renoux

  4. Biostatistics Unit, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, Seattle, USA

    Susan M. Shortreed

  5. Biostatistics Department, University of Washington, Seattle, USA

    Susan M. Shortreed

Authors
  1. Erica E. M. Moodie
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  2. Janie Coulombe
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  3. Coraline Danieli
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  4. Christel Renoux
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  5. Susan M. Shortreed
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Correspondence to Erica E. M. Moodie.

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Conflict of interest

SMS has worked on grants awarded to Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) by Bristol Meyers Squibb and by Pfizer. She was also a co-Investigator on grants awarded to KPWHRI from Syneos Health, who represented a consortium of pharmaceutical companies carrying out FDA-mandated studies regarding the safety of extended-release opioids. The study protocol was approved by the Independent Scientific Advisory Committee of the United Kingdom Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) (protocol number 19_017R) and the Research Ethics Committee of the Jewish General Hospital (Montréal, Québec, Canada).

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EEMM holds a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) in Statistical Methods for Precision Medicine; she further acknowledges support from a Discovery Grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada and a chercheur de mérite career award from the Fonds de recherche du Québec–Santé. The contributions of JC and SMS to this work were supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health, Award Number R01 MH114873. CD is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant CIHR TD3-137716 and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grant NSERC 228203. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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Moodie, E.E.M., Coulombe, J., Danieli, C. et al. Privacy-preserving estimation of an optimal individualized treatment rule: a case study in maximizing time to severe depression-related outcomes. Lifetime Data Anal (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10985-022-09554-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10985-022-09554-8

Keywords

  • Data aggregation
  • Distributed regression
  • Dynamic weighted survival modelling
  • Effect modification
  • Precision medicine
  • Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors

Mathematics Subject Classification

  • 92B15
  • 62P10