On the Colton model for clinical trials with delayed observations -- normally-distributed responses

The Colton model for the choice between two medical treatments is studied, with the additional assumption that there is a time lag between the administration of the treatments and the availability of the responses. Two simple procedures are suggested for dealing with patients who arrive during the waiting period, caused by the lag, between the trial and treatment stages of the model. The relative performance of the procedures in the Bayesian framework is discussed when the responses to the treatments are normally distributed with unknown means and a common known variance.