Article ID: | iaor2000268 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 15 |
Issue: | 1 |
Start Page Number: | 55 |
End Page Number: | 63 |
Publication Date: | Mar 1999 |
Journal: | Applied Stochastic Models and Data Analysis |
Authors: | Davidov O. |
Keywords: | markov processes |
There is a growing interest in planning and implementing broad-scale clinical trials with a focus on prevention and screening. Often, the data-generating mechanism for such experiments can be viewed as a semi-Markov process. In this communication, we develop general expressions for the steady-state probabilities for regenerative semi-Markov processes. Hence, the probability of being in a certain state at the time of recruitment to a clinical trial can be calculated. An application to breast cancer prevention is demonstrated.