BCClong: An R Package for Bayesian Consensus Clustering for Multiple Longitudinal Features

It is very common nowadays for a study to collect multiple longitudinal features and appropriately integrating these features simultaneously for defining individual subgroups (i.e., clusters) becomes increasingly crucial to understanding population heterogeneity and predicting future outcomes. The aim of this paper is to describe a new package, BCClong, which implements a Bayesian consensus clustering (BCC) model for multiple longitudinal features. Compared to existing packages, several key features make the BCClong package appealing: (a) it allows simultaneous clustering of mixed-type (e.g., continuous, discrete and categorical) longitudinal features, (b) it allows each longitudinal feature to be collected from different sources with measurements taken at distinct sets of time points (known as irregularly sampled longitudinal data), (c) it relaxes the assumption that all features have the same clustering structure by estimating the feature-specific (local) clusterings and consensus (global) clustering. Using two real data examples, we provide a tutorial with step-by-step instructions on using the package.