Discussion on "LEAP: the latent exchangeability prior for borrowing information from historical data" by Ethan M. Alt, Xiuya Chang, Xun Jiang, Qing Liu, May Mo, H. Amy Xia, and Joseph G. Ibrahim

Abstract

This discussion provides commentary on the paper by Ethan M. Alt, Xiuya Chang, Xun Jiang, Qing Liu, May Mo, H. Amy Xia, and Joseph G. Ibrahim entitled "LEAP: the latent exchangeability prior for borrowing information from historical data". The authors propose a novel method to bridge the incorporation of supplemental information into a study while also identifying potentially exchangeable subgroups to better facilitate information sharing. In this discussion, we highlight the potential relationship with other Bayesian model averaging approaches, such as multisource exchangeability modeling, and provide a brief numeric case study to illustrate how the concepts behind latent exchangeability prior may also improve the performance of existing methods. The results provided by Alt et al. are exciting, and we believe that the method represents a meaningful approach to more efficient information sharing.

Keywords: Bayesian model averaging; information sharing; multiple sources; multisource exchangeability models.