A FORTRAN program for the design and analysis of sequential clinical trials.
Clinical scientists are becoming increasingly aware of the need to monitor clinical trials in progress, and to validate their procedure by the use of a formal sequential design. An interactive program, written in FORTRAN 77 and called "PEST: Planning and Evaluation of Sequential Tests," is introduced. The program can be used to design trials based on the sequential probability ratio test, the triangular test, and the restricted procedure, among others. Furthermore, from the observed terminal values of the test statistics, the program will provide an analysis which includes the significance level and point and interval estimates of the parameter of interest. The computations are based on large-sample theory which encompasses many types of patient response, including binary and ordinal outcomes as well as survival times.
D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D003201:Computers; D006801:Humans; D011336:Probability; D012107:Research Design / Q000379:methods; D012984:Software; D013223:Statistics as Topic