Integrating clinical data from cross-sectional and longitudinal studies

Abstract

Clinical trials are typically conducted over a population in order to illuminate certain characteristics of a health issue or disease process. These cross-sectional studies provide a snapshot of these disease processes over a large population but do not allow us to model the temporal nature of disease. Longitudinal studies on the other hand, are used to explore how these processes develop over time but can be expensive and time-consuming, and only cover a relatively small window within the disease process. This paper explores a technique for integrating cross-sectional and longitudinal studies to build models of disease progression.