title: Computer-aided system for health economic evaluation.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Information Management Office, Center for Disease Control, Department of Health, Taipei, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Wen-Chou
authors.initials: WC
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Amy Ming-Fang
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Yen
authors.forename: Chi-Ming
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Chih-Hsung
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Chao
authors.forename: Tony Hsiu-Hsi
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: 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