The advent of modern computer technology and relatively cheap computing rescources have enabled computer-intensive biostatistical methods like bootstrapping and resampling methods. Furthermore new biomedical technologies like random forests have gained popularity. This technique, invented by the statistican Leo Breiman, generates a lot of decision trees randomly and uses them for classification (In classification the response is on a nominal or ordinal scale, as opposed to regression where the response is on a ratio scale). Decision trees have of course the advantage that you can draw them and interpret them (even with a very basic understanding of mathematics and statistics). Random Forrests have thus been used for clinical decision support systems.

We have developed a thorough understanding of the Random Survival Forest technique and used it for several publications, as an extension to classical survival analysis.