Estimating the cure fraction in population-based cancer studies by using FMM

Today, I read the paper 'Estimating the cure fraction in population-based cancer studies by using FMM'. The estimating result shown in the paper was good. I will try to understand all of them and see if models in this paper can be applied in my research.

Summary:
The cure fraction (the proportion of patients who are cured of disease) is of interest
to both patients and clinicians and is a useful measure to monitor trends in survival of curable
disease. The paper extends the non-mixture and mixture cure fraction models to estimate the
proportion cured of disease in population-based cancer studies by incorporating a finite mixture
of two Weibull distributions to provide more flexibility in the shape of the estimated relative survival or excess mortality functions. The methods are illustrated by using public use data from
England and Wales on survival following diagnosis of cancer of the colon where interest lies
in differences between age and deprivation groups. We show that the finite mixture approach
leads to improved model fit and estimates of the cure fraction that are closer to the empirical
estimates.This is particularly so in the oldest age group where the cure fraction is notably lower.
The cure fraction is broadly similar in each deprivation group, but the median survival of the
‘uncured’ is lower in the more deprived groups. The finite mixture approach overcomes some of
the limitations of the more simplistic cure models and has the potential to model the complex
excess hazard functions that are seen in real data. 

The estimating result is shown below, which is good.

Tomorrow, I will look more into the paper.