What is a cure model?
sobes.tech AI
Answer from AI
The cure model in survival analysis is a statistical model that accounts for the fact that a portion of the studied population may be "cured" and therefore not susceptible to the event (such as death or disease recurrence) in the future. Unlike traditional survival models, which assume that all subjects will eventually experience the event, the cure model divides the population into two subgroups: cured and not cured.
Example: In clinical cancer studies, some patients may be completely cured, and their risk of recurrence becomes negligibly small. The cure model allows modeling the probability of cure and the time to event for the not cured.
Typical model formulation:
[ S(t) = p + (1 - p) \times S_u(t) ]
where:
- (p) — the proportion of cured individuals,
- (S_u(t)) — the survival function for the not cured.
Thus, the cure model helps to more accurately describe data involving long-term survivors or cured subjects.