The design of decision-analytic models for cost-effectiveness analysis has been the subject of discussion. The current work addresses this issue by noting that, when time is to be explicitly modelled, we need to represent phenomena occurring in continuous time. Models evaluated in continuous...

While no single type of model can provide adequate answers under all circumstances, any modelling endeavour should incorporate three fundamental considerations in any decision-making question: the target population, the disease and the intervention characteristics. A target population is likely...

Background:Background: Screening and vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV) can protect against cervical cancer. Neither alone can provide 100% protection. Consequently it raises the important question about the most efficient combination of screening at specified time intervals and...

Economic models are developed to provide decision makers with information related to the real-world effectiveness of therapeutics, screening and diagnostic regimens. Although compliance with these regimens often has a significant impact on real-world clinical outcomes and costs, compliance and...

Depression is the most common mental health disorder and is recognized as a chronic disease characterized by multiple acute episodes/relapses. Although modelling techniques play an increasingly important role in the economic evaluation of depression interventions, comparatively little attention...

Background:Background: Smoking is probably the most important among preventable health risks. Health economic evaluation of smoking-cessation interventions, applying a lifetime perspective, is made possible by available epidemiological knowledge. The well established method of performing...

Background:Background: Cost data in healthcare are often skewed across patients. Thus, researchers have used either a log transformation of the dependent variable or generalized linear models with log links. However, frequently these non-linear approaches produce non-linear incremental effects:...

The aims of this review were to review decision-analytic models used to evaluate interventions in idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD), and to consider the future directions for development of methods to model the progression of PD over time. A systematic search of the healthcare literature up to...

In economic evaluation, mathematical models have a central role as a way of integrating all the relevant information about a disease and health interventions, in order to estimate costs and consequences over an extended time horizon. Models are based on scientific knowledge of disease (which is...

Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a critical public health issue with increasing effect on the healthcare budgets of developed countries. Various decision-analytic modelling approaches exist to estimate the cost effectiveness of health technologies for CHF. We sought to systematically identify...