Health economic modelling
Modelling is an essential part of health economic analyses. It is a central tool for authorities, experts and payers to support decision-making regarding healthcare resource utilization. With the help of modelling, fragmented research data, observations and experiences, as well as justified assumptions, are compiled into a synthesis that aims at anticipating and predicting the impact of healthcare interventions on individuals, patient groups, healthcare and the society. Modelling is also a manner of managing uncertainty related to a specific phenomenon with sensitivity analyses. An ideal model not only responds to the decision maker’s question on the most likely outcome but also on the question concerning the likelihood of extreme scenarios and the credibility of the results.
In its most general form, modelling relates to the cost-effectiveness of an intervention. This means that the costs – i.e. the use of healthcare resources (direct costs) and potential production losses (indirect costs) – are examined together with the health benefits of the intervention. This can be done either in terms of different effectiveness units (e.g. more life years or clinical surrogate variables) measured or in terms of the quality of life impact (utility and quality-adjusted life years). Another common target of modelling is the budget impact of an intervention. In this case, the focus is on the intervention’s impact on the use of resources. These can be even directly related to the intervention or indirectly to the entire treatment path of a patient.
Medaffcon has the ability to complete modelling projects from the localisation of the customer’s ready global core models to the comprehensive construction of models from the beginning.
The final outcomes of the projects are for example used in:
- authority contexts,
- negotiations with decision-makers and payers at different levels,
- support of sales and marketing, for example in material production or tailor-made tools used in sales situations.
