HazReg: Parametric Hazard-Based Regression Models for Survival Data

Overview

HazReg is an R package for fitting parametric hazard-based regression models for survival data in both the overall survival and relative (net) survival frameworks. The package is built around the General Hazard (GH) structure, which nests the most widely used hazard regression models as special cases:

Model	Abbreviation	Special case of GH
General Hazard	GH	—
Proportional Hazards	PH	✓
Accelerated Failure Time	AFT	✓
Accelerated Hazards	AH	✓

Models are fitted by maximum likelihood via nlminb and optim. Users should specify initial values and verify convergence of the optimisation, as is standard practice for these routines.

Installation

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("FJRubio67/HazReg")
library(HazReg)

Main functions

Function	Framework	Description
GHMLE	Overall survival	Fits GH, PH, AFT, and AH models
GEHMLE	Relative (excess) survival	Fits excess hazard versions of the above
simGH	—	Simulates survival times from a GH structure

For full documentation: ?GHMLE, ?GEHMLE, ?simGH

Baseline hazard distributions

Both GHMLE and GEHMLE support the following parametric baseline hazards. All positive parameters are log-transformed for unconstrained optimisation.

Distribution	Key	GH	PH	AFT	AH
Power Generalised Weibull	PGW	✓	✓	✓	✓
Exponentiated Weibull	EW	✓	✓	✓	✓
Generalised Gamma	GenGamma	✓	✓	✓	✓
Gamma	Gamma	✓	✓	✓	✓
Log-normal	LogNormal	✓	✓	✓	✓
Log-logistic	LogLogistic	✓	✓	✓	✓
Weibull	Weibull	—	✓	✓	✓

Hazard and related functions (PDF, CDF, survival) are also exported directly, e.g. ?hpgw, ?hggama.

Tutorials and examples

• Overall survival: HazReg models — RPubs
• Overall survival: HazReg models — Quarto Pub
• Relative survival: Excess hazard models — RPubs
• Simulating from a GH structure — RPubs
• Simulating from a GH structure with flexible baseline — RPubs

Related resources

• Short course on Parametric Survival Analysis
• HazReg.jl — Julia implementation
• MEGH — GH models for clustered survival data
• SimLT — Simulating survival times from life tables

Citation

If you use HazReg in your work, please cite the package and the relevant methodological papers linked in the tutorials above.