Leveraging Heterogeneity in Time-to-Event Predictions

Real-world decision-making often requires reasoning about when an event will occur. The overarching goal of such reasoning is to help aid decision-making for optimal triage and subsequent intervention. Such problems involving estimation of Times-to-an-Event frequently arise across multiple application areas, including,

Healthcare and Bio-informatics: More commonly known as ‘Survival Analysis‘ involves prognostication of an adverse physiological event like a stroke, the onset of cancer, re-hospitalization, and mortality. Time-toevent or survival analysis can be used to proactively mitigate adverse outcomes and extend the longevity of patients.

Internet Marketing and e-commerce: Models employed for estimating customer churn and retention in large commercial organizations are essentially time-to-event regression models and help determine best practices to maximize customer retention.

Predictive Maintenance: Reliability engineering and systems safety research involves the use of remaining useful life prediction models to help extend the longevity of machinery and equipment by proactive part and component replacement.

Finance and Actuarial and Sciences: Time-to-Event models are ubiquitous in the estimation of optimal financial strategies for setting insurance premiums, as well as estimating credit defaulting behavior.