Reference and Prediction Regions in Medical and Pharmaceutical Research

• Activity Number: 273
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Biopharmaceutical Section
• Author(s): Robb Muirhead*+
• Companies: Statistical Scientist
• Keywords: reference region ; Bayes prediction ; multivariate analysis ; QT interval ; laboratory data

Abstract

There is a sizeable amount of literature in biomedical and clinical research on the determination and use of reference regions for multivariate data, mostly in subject-specific journals. In this talk we review some of this literature, and outline some new directions: these include the construction and interpretation of reference regions for ECG parameters obtained from heart "beat-to-beat" data, and the use of reference regions for monitoring clinical safety data (such as lab data). Closely related to this topic is that of interpreting reference regions as Bayes prediction regions. Some recent work in this area will also be outlned.