Prognostic Research online

Prognosis is a key concept in patient care. The methodology of prognostic research is however relatively underdeveloped. This is in contrast to its growing importance in clinical medicine. In the course, principles and methods of non-experimental prognostic research will be discussed. In lectures, practical exercises and discussion of examples, the practice of prognostic research in a clinical setting is addressed. Emphasis will be on design and statistical analysis of prognostic studies, construction and estimation of prediction rules and approaches to validation and generalization of research results. Problems with small datasets will be extensively discussed.

In the course, the following topics will be discussed:

• The principles of Prognosis Research and the interpretation of its results.
• The steps of prognostic model validation, including updating models to their validation population.
• The steps of prognostic model development, including predictor selection and the evaluation of model performance, and more special issues including overfitting and shrinkage.
• Prognosis research with time to event data, e.g. Cox regression models, and other outcomes, and addresses overlap and differences with regard to general linear models.