Description: 
This half day course provides an introduction into medical decision analysis a tool for clinical evaluation, benefit-harm analysis and medical decision making. This course consists of lectures, interactive group exercises and discussions. Examples of published medical decision analyses will be used to illustrate the fields of application, methodological approaches, results and implications of medical decision analysis. Modeling recommendations of the ISPOR-SMDM Joint Modeling Good Research Practices Task Force will be presented to allow participants assessing and judging the quality and validity of decision models. Strengths and limitations of medical decision analysis will be discussed at the end of the course.

Objectives:

• To understand the key concepts and goals of medical decision analysis, the basic methods of decision tree analysis, Markov modeling and way to choose an appropriate model
• To understand why and when decision-analytic modeling should be used in clinical evaluation, and to critically judge the conclusions derived from a decision-analytic model and know the strengths and limitations of modeling