Some applications of phase-type distributions in recurrent events

Abstract: In this paper, the recurrent events that can occur more than one over the follow-up time have been modeled by phase-type distributions. We use the finite-state continuous-time Markov process with multi states for patients with recurrent events. The number of recurrences until time $t$, the time stay for every state and the time till death are of importances. The time till death is assumed to have a phase-type distribution (which is defined in a Markov chain environment) with interpretable parameters. The underlying continuous-time Markov chain has one absorbing state (death) and transient states to reflect recovery and disease stages. A system of differential equations is obtained to calculate the probability of various number of transitions, the conditional expected time to stay in a disease stage and the probability of transition from a stage to another. The model has been calibrated via a real and simulated datasets. The bootstrap techniques have been used to construct the confidence intervals for the parameters.