354 – Contributed Oral Poster Presentations: Section on Statistical Computing
The tvtools Package for R
David Shilane
For statistical studies, longitudinal records may be compiled into long-form time-varying databases (panel data). The temporal component of time-varying data adds complexity to even basic descriptive analyses. I created the tvtools package for R to simplify the analysis of time-varying data. Basic statistics (e.g. the mean number of heart attacks per person-year of follow-up) may be displayed by treatment category and time period. Exposure rates may be summarized over time intervals. Missing data rates may be plotted over time. Methods are available to compute the date of first treatment or event. The tvtools package also provides a method for visualizing a patient's entire medical history. This includes an indication of when patients are on and off particular treatments, markers for procedures, and the occurrence of events.
