Princeton, NJ, USA – How do you decide which car to buy? You read the reviews and make a choice based on what the reviews tell you about the features that are important to you. Health care decision makers do this, too. Health care researchers develop models of certain scenarios and keep in mind factors (parameters) and unknowns instances (uncertainty) that may affect the outcome.
In the paper, “
Model Parameter Estimation and Uncertainty: A Report of the ISPOR-SMDM Modeling Good Research Practices Task Force Working Group-6,” the authors discuss best practices for creating these models. Co-author, Dr. Milton Weinstein, PhD, states, "Explicit consideration of the implications of uncertainty in models, by either deterministic or probabilistic sensitivity analysis or both, and addressing both parameter uncertainty and model structure, is an essential component of economic evaluation."
This paper is one of the seven papers in the series on modeling study best practices and is jointly published in
Value in Health, the official journal of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR), and
Medical Decision Making, the official journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM).
Value in Health (ISSN 1098-3015) publishes papers, concepts, and ideas that advance the field of pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research as well as policy papers to help health care leaders make evidence-based decisions. The journal is published bi-monthly and has over 8,000 subscribers (clinicians, decision makers, and researchers worldwide).
International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) is a nonprofit, international, educational and scientific organization that strives to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and fairness of health care resource use to improve health.
For more information:
www.ispor.org