The paper proposes a new policy for optimal treatment allocation based on quantile treatment effects.
problem Optimal treatment allocation policies that target distributional welfare, especially when individuals are heterogeneous.
method The approach involves allocating treatments based on the conditional quantile of individual treatment effects (QoTE), considering both prudent and negligent policymakers.
result The proposed minimax policies are robust to model uncertainty and can be generalized to various settings.
Study optimal treatment assignment policies under strategic agent responses.
problem Learning optimal treatment policies with strategic agents complicates estimation.
method Dynamic model with threshold convergence to mean-field equilibrium, consistent estimator for policy gradient.
result Threshold for treatment assignment converges to mean-field equilibrium threshold under large but finite number of agents.
Three approaches learn personalized treatment policies for UTI patients.
problem Learning optimal treatment policies in multiobjective settings with fully observed outcomes.
method Indirect and direct approaches using predictive models and without intermediate models.
result All approaches outperform clinicians in achieving better performance on all outcomes and trade-offs.
Estimates and infers multi-stage stationary treatment policies with variable selection.
problem Valid inference for multi-stage stationary treatment policies with high-dimensional feature variables.
method Estimate the value function using augmented inverse probability weighted estimator, apply penalty for variable selection, construct one-step improvements for valid inference.
result Improved estimators are asymptotically normal, valid inference for policy parameters demonstrated.
Proposes a new method to estimate continuous treatment policies and match treatments effectively.
problem Current methods struggle with continuous treatment policies and complex matching.
method Formulates treatment effectiveness as a parametrizable model, using deep learning for optimization.
result Significant improvement in treatment effectiveness and matching efficiency.
The paper develops methods to estimate optimal treatment sequences under policy constraints.
problem Estimating the best sequence of treatments over multiple stages for individuals.
method Empirical welfare maximization approach, solving treatment assignment sequentially or simultaneously.
result Established convergence rates and upper bounds for estimation methods.
AACE learns treatment policies from EHRs using annotations to improve accuracy.
problem Learning treatment policies from multimodal EHRs with bias and inefficiency.
method Annotation-assisted coarsened effects (AACE) method.
result AACE outperforms existing methods in predicting treatment benefit from multimodal EHRs.
Study optimal and equitable encouragement policies for treatment adherence.
problem Optimal treatment adherence policies in the presence of human non-adherence.
method Covariate-conditional no-direct-effect model of encouragement; tractable policy characterizations under constraints.
result Induced treatment take-up is the fairness target, not recommendation rates.
We study the problem of policy evaluation and learning from batched contextual bandit data when treatments are continuous, going beyond previous work on discrete treatments. Previous work for discrete treatment/action spaces focuses on inverse probability weighting (IPW) and doubly robust (DR) methods that use a reject…
The paper learns personalized treatment rules from observational data.
problem Developing effective treatment policies for individual patients.
method Contextual bandit approach to minimize expected risk of treatment policies.
result The proposed method outperforms physicians and baseline approaches in IV and VP administration.
Method learns optimal treatment sequences from observational data.
problem Optimal dynamic treatment regimes for public policies and medical interventions.
method Doubly robust classification-based approach via backward induction.
result Achieves optimal convergence rate of n^(-1/2) for welfare regret.
Paper derives policy rules from observational data for hepatitis C treatment.
problem Improving treatment guidelines for HIV/HCV co-infected patients.
method Weighted K-means algorithm for estimating CATEs, decision tree implementation.
result Identifies a subgroup with high spontaneous HCV clearance rate.
Develops deep jump learning for continuous treatment OPE.
problem Estimating mean outcomes under new treatment rules using historical data from different rules.
method Adaptive deep discretization of continuous treatment space using deep learning and multi-scale change point detection.
result Validated method through theoretical results, simulations, and real application to Warfarin Dosing.
Proposes a fusion method for many treatment groups in ITRs.
problem Challenges in handling many treatment groups with data sparsity and covariate imbalance.
method Calibration-weighted treatment fusion procedure that balances covariates and fuses similar treatments.
result Ensures robust treatment group recovery and policy value compared to existing methods.
Proposes fair and robust methods for estimating treatment effects.
problem Estimating treatment effects while maintaining fairness.
method Simple, nonparametric framework with fairness constraints.
result Estimators are double robust and characterize welfare trade-offs.
Q-learning adapted to find near-equivalent treatment strategies.
problem Finding optimal treatment sequences in dynamic treatment regimes.
method Introducing a worst-value tolerance criterion to find sets of near-equivalent policies.
result Constructs families of near-equivalent treatment strategies.
In treatment allocation problems the individuals to be treated often arrive sequentially. We study a problem in which the policy maker is not only interested in the expected cumulative welfare but is also concerned about the uncertainty/risk of the treatment outcomes. At the outset, the total number of treatment assign…
Study optimizes experimental design for best treatment arm identification.
problem Identifying the best treatment arm given contextual information.
method Adaptive Sampling-Policy Learning (PLAS) strategy for minimax rate optimality.
result PLAS strategy achieves minimax rate optimality in expected simple regret.
The paper proposes an interpretable off-policy learning algorithm for medical treatments.
problem Lack of interpretable methods for personalized treatment decisions from observational data.
method Hyperbox search approach for interpretable policies in disjunctive normal form.
result The proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art methods in terms of regret and is rated highly interpretable by clinical experts.
This work addresses causal inference challenges in networked interference and proposes GNN-based estimators for individual treatment effects.
problem Estimating individual treatment effects in randomized experiments with networked interference.
method Uses Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) to capture network dependencies and derive causal effect estimators.
result Provides policy regret bounds and heuristic error bounds for GNN-based causal estimators under network interference and treatment capacity constraints.
End-to-end policy learning method improves CATE estimation.
problem Learning optimal treatment policies from partially observed data.
method Modified causal forest for policy learning.
result Maximizing policy value is equivalent to minimizing CATE.
New framework estimates treatment effects based on preferences.
problem Estimating treatment effects with flexible outcomes.
method Preference-based Conditional Treatment Effect (CPTE) framework.
result CPTE provides interpretable targets and new identifiability conditions.
System interprets complex treatment effects for personalized policies.
problem Complex, hard-to-understand treatment effect models.
method Scalable, interpretable personalized experimentation system.
result Learned explanations and generated interpretable policies.
Estimates personalized policies robust to shifts in target populations.
problem Estimating policies that perform well in diverse target populations.
method Develops methods for estimating robust policies considering shifts in outcomes and characteristics.
result Welfare-maximizing policies are robust to certain shifts in potential outcomes.
The paper addresses treatment recommendation problems by optimizing distributional characteristics.
problem Optimizing treatment recommendations based on distributional targets.
method Characterizes the problem's difficulty and proposes near-optimal policies.
result Characterizes the difficulty of the problem and proposes near-regret optimal policies.
EHR-MPC optimizes sepsis treatment using digital twins and inference-time control.
problem Optimal sepsis treatment policies are contested and difficult to adapt during inference.
method EHR-MPC decouples learning patient dynamics from treatment optimization, enabling inference-time control over learned digital twins.
result EHR-MPC achieves comparable off-policy performance and improved simulation performance compared to RL baselines.
Study bridges welfare maximization and CATE estimation in policy learning.
problem Tackles the gap between empirical welfare maximization and conditional average treatment effect estimation in policy learning.
method Shows equivalence between EWM and least squares over reparameterized policy class, proposes regularization method.
result Both approaches are interchangeable under common conditions and share theoretical guarantees.
Sepsis is a dangerous condition that is a leading cause of patient mortality. Treating sepsis is highly challenging, because individual patients respond very differently to medical interventions and there is no universally agreed-upon treatment for sepsis. In this work, we explore the use of continuous state-space mode…
Dynamic treatment strategies on networks amplify policy impact through spillovers.
problem Effective dynamic treatment allocation in network settings.
method Q-Ising, a three-stage pipeline integrating Bayesian dynamic Ising model, treatment adoption histories, and offline reinforcement learning.
result Adaptive targeting outperforms static centrality benchmarks in Indian village microfinance networks and synthetic data.
Optimizes treatment allocation using covariates for better outcomes.
problem Improving treatment allocation in multi-armed bandit problems.
method Maximizes a functional of the conditional potential outcome distribution.
result Developed expected regret lower bounds and near minimax optimal policy.
In many areas, practitioners seek to use observational data to learn a treatment assignment policy that satisfies application-specific constraints, such as budget, fairness, simplicity, or other functional form constraints. For example, policies may be restricted to take the form of decision trees based on a limited se…
Proposes a framework to reconcile policy learning and profit maximization in CATE estimation.
problem Aligning CATE estimation with profit maximization for optimal customer treatment decisions.
method Optimizes a novel objective function that concentrates learning capacity near the decision boundary, ensuring consistency with the original profit function.
result Consistent CATE estimates can be recovered from existing profit-maximization pipelines, allowing firms to navigate the trade-off between accuracy and profit.
POLAR optimizes treatment strategies in dynamic settings with statistical guarantees.
problem Optimizing sequential decisions in dynamic treatment regimes with robustness and statistical guarantees.
method Pessimistic model-based approach estimating transition dynamics and incorporating uncertainty penalties.
result Offers statistical and computational guarantees, including finite-sample bounds on policy suboptimality.
Proposes a new DiD method for learning optimal treatment policies.
problem Violation of parallel trends assumption in DiD.
method Instrumented DiD approach with binary IV, Wald, IPW, and semiparametric estimators.
result Establishes consistency and asymptotic normality of estimators.
PNNs improve personalized healthcare policies using mixed integer programming.
problem Learning treatment policies for patients with limited data.
method Prescriptive networks (PNNs) trained with mixed integer programming.
result PNNs outperform existing methods in reducing peak blood pressure.
New method optimizes treatment policies to avoid winner's curse.
problem Winner's curse in treatment policy optimization.
method Inference-aware policy optimization.
result Optimizes for both estimated performance and downstream evaluation.
Much attention has been devoted recently to the development of machine learning algorithms with the goal of improving treatment policies in healthcare. Reinforcement learning (RL) is a sub-field within machine learning that is concerned with learning how to make sequences of decisions so as to optimize long-term effect…
The paper introduces a new method for estimating optimal policies in dynamic treatment regimes using information geometry.
problem Estimating optimal policies in dynamic treatment regimes.
method Minimum information divergence method based on γ-power divergence. result The γ-power divergence method effectively seeks the optimal policy by vanishing the divergence between policy-equivalent Q-functions. Proposes a method to improve treatment policies in data-scarce clinical settings.
problem Improving treatment policies in data-scarce clinical settings with unobserved confounding.
method Uses a causal mechanism to model the underlying generative process and augments counterfactual trajectories with source domain priors.
result Significantly improves treatment policy performance in a simulated sepsis treatment task.
BRACE addresses noncompliance in bandits, offering methods for recommendation and treatment policies.
problem Noncompliance in bandit problems complicates learning objectives and treatment effects.
method BRACE formalizes objective-choice, identifies direct-control regimes, and proposes a phase-doubling algorithm for IV inversion.
result BRACE delivers valid policy values and structural uncertainty, even under weak identification and homogeneity failure.
Proposes a new method to optimize treatment allocation with budget constraints.
problem Optimizing treatment allocation with budget constraints in marketing.
method Learning to rank for profit maximization.
result Learning to rank can maximize the area under a policy's incremental profit curve.
Paper tackles efficient evaluation of natural stochastic policies in offline RL.
problem Efficiency issues in evaluating natural stochastic policies due to unknown evaluation policy.
method Derive efficiency bounds for tilting and modified treatment policies, propose nonparametric estimators.
result Proposed estimators attain efficiency bounds under lax conditions and enjoy partial double robustness.
Bayesian approach for modeling counterfactual distribution and off-policy evaluation.
problem Modeling the counterfactual distribution and off-policy evaluation.
method Bayesian conditional mean embeddings and novel Bayesian methods for estimating ultimate treatment effect.
result Quantifying epistemic uncertainty in the counterfactual distribution and off-policy evaluation.
Many applied decision-making problems have a dynamic component: The policymaker needs not only to choose whom to treat, but also when to start which treatment. For example, a medical doctor may choose between postponing treatment (watchful waiting) and prescribing one of several available treatments during the many vis…
Proposes pT-Learning for optimal dynamic treatment regimes in mHealth.
problem Challenges in learning optimal dynamic treatment regimes with large intervention options and infinite time horizon.
method Proximal Temporal consistency Learning (pT-Learning) framework for adaptively adjusting between deterministic and stochastic policies.
result Minimax estimator avoids double sampling issue and can incorporate off-policy data.
Inverse classification uses an induced classifier as a queryable oracle to guide test instances towards a preferred posterior class label. The result produced from the process is a set of instance-specific feature perturbations, or recommendations, that optimally improve the probability of the class label. In this work…
Estimates RL data for dynamic treatment effects using GMM.
problem Estimating dynamic treatment effects from RL data with nonstationary behavior policies.
method Weighted GMM approach to stabilize variance in adaptive RL settings.
result Valid hypothesis testing and confidence regions for dynamic treatment effects.
Develops a new RL algorithm for medical treatment regimes.
problem Optimal dose determination in continuous action environments.
method Quasi-optimal learning algorithm for near-optimal actions.
result Guaranteed convergence and effectiveness in real applications.