Developing and testing models to predict mortality in the general population.

We have previously proposed an approach using information collected from published reports to generate prediction models. The goal of this project was to validate this technique to develop and test various prediction models. A risk indicator (R) is calculated as a linear combination of the hazard ratios for the following predictors: age, male gender, diabetes, albuminuria, and either CKD, CVD or both. We developed a linear and two exponential expressions to predict the probability of the outcome of 2-year mortality and compared to actual outcome in the target dataset from NHANES. The risk indicator demonstrated good performance with area under ROC curve of 0.84. The linear and two exponential expressions generated similar predictions in the lower categories of risk indicator (R ≤ 6). However, in the groups with higher R value, the linear expression tends to predict lower, and the exponential expressions higher, probabilities than the observed outcome. A Combined model which averaged the linear and logistic expressions was shown to approximate the actual outcome data the best. A simple technique (named Woodpecker™) allows derivation functional prediction models and risk stratification tools from reports of clinical outcome studies and their application to new populations by using only summary statistics of the new population.