Computer-aided system for health economic evaluation.
BACKGROUND
Health policy makers are usually stranded by the complicated infrastructure and intensive computation related to economic evaluation.


OBJECTIVE
It is therefore valuable to develop a computer-aided tool to help health personnel to perform economic evaluation with ease.


METHODS
The infrastructure for economic evaluation was first designed. Markov process with micro-simulation was applied to model the disease natural history or lifetime sequale to project the effectiveness by comparing all possible decisions. All the essential elements of economic evaluation together with sensitivity analysis are encoded in this computer-aided software written with SAS Screen Control Language in user-defined menu style. ILLUSTRATION: Screening versus no screening for colorectal cancer was used as an example.


CONCLUSIONS
The computer-aided model for economic evaluation was developed in this study. It is anticipated that the flexibility and user-defined menu style facilitate the wide application of economic evaluation to health care intervention program.
Lin
Wen-Chou
WC
Information Management Office, Center for Disease Control, Department of Health, Taipei, Taiwan.
Yen
Amy Ming-Fang
AM
Chang
Chi-Ming
CM
Chao
Chih-Hsung
CH
Chen
Tony Hsiu-Hsi
TH
D015179:Colorectal Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D003658:Decision Making, Computer-Assisted; D006801:Humans; D008390:Markov Chains; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000191:economics*; D017059:Models, Econometric; D012985:Software Design