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Example Of Decision Analytic Models

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Decision analytic models are used to examine cost effectiveness of healthcare interventions. These models summarise available evidence succinctly for analysis. When there is a lack of observed evidence, expert opinions on the mean or median values (occasionally the minimum and maximum range) for the parameter of interest are commonly used. This does not provide sufficient information to examine whether the distribution of uncertainty surrounding the parameter of interest is representative of the expert’s opinion. As this is a key component in Probabilistic Sensitivity Analysis (PSA) commonly used in decision analytic models, as recommended by NICE(1), there is need to ensure the appropriate distribution of parameter uncertainty to …show more content…

This systematic review by Grigore et al(2) highlighted the need for guidelines to critically appraise elicitation exercises and suggested for more research to define these measurement criteria. The authors proposed that until a definitive checklist is developed, the validity and reliability of the elicitation exercise should always be reported explicitly.

Following this 2013 systematic review, the same authors published an article in 2016, on a study that compared the results for two commonly used elicitation methods, the histogram and hybrid methods(3). This study had the following 3 objectives
1) Examine how these two methods appealed to the experts,
2) Determine if there were any differences in the elicited distributions and;
3) Compare the impact of the elicited distributions on an actual decision model

The study results showed that
1) Generally, the experts found the histogram method easier to use compared to the hybrid method although the two elicitation methods were closely ranked by the experts in terms of ease of use and face validity
2) The distributions from the histogram method were slightly narrower than the distributions from the hybrid method, suggesting greater certainty when aggregated.

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