NCC: An R-package for analysis and simulation of platform trials with non-concurrent controls

TL;DR

The paper introduces the R-package NCC, which facilitates the design, simulation, and analysis of platform trials that incorporate non-concurrent controls to improve statistical power and efficiency.

Contribution

It provides a new R-package enabling simulation and analysis of platform trials with non-concurrent controls, a novel approach for improving trial efficiency.

Findings

NCC allows for flexible simulation of platform trials.

The package supports evaluation of analysis methods using non-concurrent controls.

Examples demonstrate practical application of NCC in trial design.

Abstract

Platform trials evaluate the efficacy of multiple treatments, allowing for late entry of the experimental arms and enabling efficiency gains by sharing controls. The power of individual treatment-control comparisons in such trials can be improved by utilizing non-concurrent controls (NCC) in the analysis. We present the R-package NCC for the design and analysis of platform trials using non-concurrent controls. NCC allows for simulating platform trials and evaluating the properties of analysis methods that make use of non-concurrent controls in a variety of settings. We describe the main NCC functions and show how to use the package to simulate and analyse platform trials by means of specific examples.