Efficient and robust transfer learning of optimal individualized treatment regimes with right-censored survival data

Understand

An individualized treatment regime (ITR) is a decision rule that assigns treatments based on patients' characteristics.

• The value function of an ITR is the expected outcome in a counterfactual world had this ITR been implemented.
• Recently, there has been increasing interest in combining heterogeneous data sources, such as leveraging the complementary features of randomized controlled trial (RCT) data and a large observational study (OS).
• Usually, a covariate shift exists between the source and target population, rendering the source-optimal ITR unnecessarily optimal for the target population.