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Use of State Sequence Analysis in Pharmacoepidemiology: A Tutorial

While state sequence analysis (SSA) has been long used in social sciences, its use in pharmacoepidemiology is still in its infancy. Indeed, this technique is relatively easy to use, and its intrinsic visual nature may help investigators to untangle the latent information within prescription data, fa...

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Autores principales: Vanoli, Jacopo, Nava, Consuelo Rubina, Airoldi, Chiara, Ucciero, Andrealuna, Salvi, Virginio, Barone-Adesi, Francesco
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8705850/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34949007
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413398
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author Vanoli, Jacopo
Nava, Consuelo Rubina
Airoldi, Chiara
Ucciero, Andrealuna
Salvi, Virginio
Barone-Adesi, Francesco
author_facet Vanoli, Jacopo
Nava, Consuelo Rubina
Airoldi, Chiara
Ucciero, Andrealuna
Salvi, Virginio
Barone-Adesi, Francesco
author_sort Vanoli, Jacopo
collection PubMed
description While state sequence analysis (SSA) has been long used in social sciences, its use in pharmacoepidemiology is still in its infancy. Indeed, this technique is relatively easy to use, and its intrinsic visual nature may help investigators to untangle the latent information within prescription data, facilitating the individuation of specific patterns and possible inappropriate use of medications. In this paper, we provide an educational primer of the most important learning concepts and methods of SSA, including measurement of dissimilarities between sequences, the application of clustering methods to identify sequence patterns, the use of complexity measures for sequence patterns, the graphical visualization of sequences, and the use of SSA in predictive models. As a worked example, we present an application of SSA to opioid prescription patterns in patients with non-cancer pain, using real-world data from Italy. We show how SSA allows the identification of patterns in prescriptions in these data that might not be evident using standard statistical approaches and how these patterns are associated with future discontinuation of opioid therapy.
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spelling pubmed-87058502021-12-25 Use of State Sequence Analysis in Pharmacoepidemiology: A Tutorial Vanoli, Jacopo Nava, Consuelo Rubina Airoldi, Chiara Ucciero, Andrealuna Salvi, Virginio Barone-Adesi, Francesco Int J Environ Res Public Health Article While state sequence analysis (SSA) has been long used in social sciences, its use in pharmacoepidemiology is still in its infancy. Indeed, this technique is relatively easy to use, and its intrinsic visual nature may help investigators to untangle the latent information within prescription data, facilitating the individuation of specific patterns and possible inappropriate use of medications. In this paper, we provide an educational primer of the most important learning concepts and methods of SSA, including measurement of dissimilarities between sequences, the application of clustering methods to identify sequence patterns, the use of complexity measures for sequence patterns, the graphical visualization of sequences, and the use of SSA in predictive models. As a worked example, we present an application of SSA to opioid prescription patterns in patients with non-cancer pain, using real-world data from Italy. We show how SSA allows the identification of patterns in prescriptions in these data that might not be evident using standard statistical approaches and how these patterns are associated with future discontinuation of opioid therapy. MDPI 2021-12-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8705850/ /pubmed/34949007 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413398 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Vanoli, Jacopo
Nava, Consuelo Rubina
Airoldi, Chiara
Ucciero, Andrealuna
Salvi, Virginio
Barone-Adesi, Francesco
Use of State Sequence Analysis in Pharmacoepidemiology: A Tutorial
title Use of State Sequence Analysis in Pharmacoepidemiology: A Tutorial
title_full Use of State Sequence Analysis in Pharmacoepidemiology: A Tutorial
title_fullStr Use of State Sequence Analysis in Pharmacoepidemiology: A Tutorial
title_full_unstemmed Use of State Sequence Analysis in Pharmacoepidemiology: A Tutorial
title_short Use of State Sequence Analysis in Pharmacoepidemiology: A Tutorial
title_sort use of state sequence analysis in pharmacoepidemiology: a tutorial
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8705850/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34949007
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182413398
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