From: Clinical data mining: challenges, opportunities, and recommendations for translational applications
 | Source of heterogeneity | Attributes | |
---|---|---|---|
Participants | Demographic characteristics | Spatial heterogeneity; Time heterogeneity; Space–time heterogeneity | |
Phenotype | |||
Genotype | |||
Behavioral characteristics and social factors | |||
Interventions | Proficiency in professional skills | Diversity of therapeutic regimen (monotonically improvement); Diversity of clinical practice guidelines | |
Nursing quality | |||
Medical quality | |||
Accessibility of medical devices | |||
Outcomes | Type of the outcome: primary and secondary outcomes, side effects, disease progression | Subjectivity: doctor subjective report and patient self-report | |
 | Definition of the outcome: including binary and continue with cut-off | Objectivity: diagnostic report (imaging, pathology, laboratory tests) | |
 | Observation duration | Time effect: timeliness or lateness of outcome occurrence time | |
Comparisons | Case–control | PS Matching | Post-hot randomization |
PS Weighting (IPTW, SMRW) | Non-randomization | ||
Cohort studies | Instrumental variable | Randomization-like | |
Randomization | Â | Randomized controlled trial |