Published Jan 17, 2013

Bethesda, MD, USA - Health economic models attempt to replicate a disease process of interest in order to analyze the costs and benefits of a health care intervention. In many models, the risk of disease is assumed to be constant. Some conditions, such as infectious diseases, are associated with external benefits where one person’s actions can decrease the risk of disease transmission in others. These benefits translate to additional disease prevention and/or cost benefits that would not be captured with typical modeling methodology. To accurately quantify the value of interventions to prevent infectious diseases, modeling methods capable of capturing benefits observed in targeted individuals as well as those outside of the target population are best. The article, "Understanding and use of dynamic models in health economic analyses," published in Volume 18, Issue 6, of ISPOR CONNECTIONS, presents the basic principles for the use of dynamic modeling in a manner accessible to all researchers. Lead author Dr. Sonya Snedecor describes this work as “a primer to help health economists and decision-makers become familiar with dynamic modeling methodology and understand its application in assessing the value of interventions in certain disease situations. Because this methodology is relatively more complex, some may consider it to be a ‘black box’ and thus may be resistant to its use in pharmacoeconomic modeling.” This article was originally presented as a workshop at the ISPOR 16th Annual International Meeting (2011) by author Sonya J. Snedecor of Pharmerit International and colleagues, Elamin H. Elbasha and Erik Dasback of Merck Research Laboratories.

---