A computationally efficient nonparametric sampling (NPS) method of time to event for individual-level models

Abstract

PurposeIndividual-level simulation models often require sampling times to events, however efficient parametric distributions for many processes may often not exist. For example, time to death from life tables cannot be accurately sampled from existing parametric distributions. We propose an efficient nonparametric method to sample times to events that does not require any parametric assumption on the hazards.MethodsWe developed a nonparametric sampling (NPS) approach that simultaneously draws multiple time-to-event samples from a categorical distribution. This approach can be applied to univariate and multivariate processes. The probabilities for each time interval are derived from the time interval-specific constant hazards. The times to events can then be used directly in individual-level simulation models. We compared the accuracy of our approach in sampling time-to-events from common parametric distributions, including exponential, Gamma, and Gompertz. In addition, we evaluated the method’s performance in sampling age to death from US life tables and sampling times to events from parametric baseline hazards with time-dependent covariates.ResultsThe NPS method estimated similar expected times to events from 1 million draws for the three parametric distributions, 100,000 draws for the homogenous cohort, 200,000 draws from the heterogeneous cohort, and 1 million draws for the parametric distributions with time-varying covariates, all in less than a second.ConclusionOur method produces accurate and computationally efficient samples for time-to-events from hazards without requiring parametric assumptions. This approach can substantially reduce the computation time required to simulate individual-level models.