Efficient auxiliary information synthesis for cure rate model

Abstract

Abstract We propose a new auxiliary information synthesis method to utilize subgroup survival information at multiple time points under the semi-parametric mixture cure rate model. After summarizing the auxiliary information via estimating equations, a control variate technique is adopted to reduce the variance efficiently, together with a test statistic to check the homogeneity assumption. Revision using penalization is further considered to adaptively accommodate potential population heterogeneity. Our methods can be adjusted when the uncertainty is not negligible. We establish asymptotic properties of our proposed estimators, and demonstrate their practical performances through extensive simulations and an invasive breast cancer study.