Building Reality Checks into the Translational Pathway for Diagnostic and Prognostic Models

• Main Authors: Lendrem, Dennis W, Lendrem, B Clare, Pratt, Arthur G, Tarn, Jessica R, Skelton, Andrew, James, Kathryn, McMeekin, Peter, Linsley, Matt, Gillespie, Colin, Cordell, Heather, Ng, Wan-Fai, Isaacs, John D
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 25-10-2018
• Subjects: Statistics - Applications
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1810.10936

There has been a significant increase in the number of diagnostic and
prognostic models published in the last decade. Testing such models in an
independent, external validation cohort gives some assurance the model will
transfer to a naturalistic, healthcare setting. Of 2,147 published models in
the PubMed database, we found just 120 included some kind of separate external
validation cohort. Of these studies not all were sufficiently well documented
to allow a judgement about whether that model was likely to transfer to other
centres, with other patients, treated by other clinicians, using data scored or
analysed by other laboratories. We offer a solution to better characterizing
the validation cohort and identify the key steps on the translational pathway
for diagnostic and prognostic models.