THE WINNER OF THE BEST PAPER AWARD OF THE SWEDISH SOCIETY OF MEDICAL STATISTICS (FMS) 2021

The winner of the best paper award of the Swedish Society of Medical Statistics (FMS) 2021 is:

“Extrapolating cancer patient survival: a comparison of the flexible parametric model and the rolling-over algorithm” – by Enoch Yi-Tung Chen, Department of Global Public Health.

The motivation from the prize committee:

We are very happy to give the 2021 award of the Swedish Society for Medical Statistics best student paper to Enoch Yi-Tung Chen.

The author presents two methods, the flexible parametric model (FPM) and the rolling-over algorithm (ROA), for estimating survival functions. Both methods have previously been used to extrapolate patients’ survival over the observed time but also applied for estimation of the loss of life expectancy due to cancer. In Chen’s master thesis the two approaches are also applied and compared to the Kaplan Meier estimates for studies of patients with colon cancer and breast cancer.

Chen gives a simple but precise presentation of the statistical theoretical concepts and definitions related to the problem under study within survival analysis. He presents motivating data sets, two cohorts of colon cancer patients and two cohorts of breast cancer patients, together with a comparative investigation of the FPM and ROA. Chen has carried out his task in a commendable way and his thesis can serve as an excellent example of a comparative study of statistical estimation approaches with a motivating empirical example for statistics in medicine.