This is the first book to make all the central concepts of discrete event simulation relevant for health technology assessment. Accessible to beginners, the book requires no prerequisites and describes the concepts with as little jargon as possible. It presents essential concepts, a fully worked out implementation example, approaches to analyze the simulations, the development of the required equations, model verification techniques, and validation. The book also covers various special topics and includes a real case study involving screening strategies for breast cancer surveillance.

It is becoming increasingly important to examine the relationship between the outcomes of a clinical trial and the costs of the medical therapy under study. The results of such analysis can affect reimbursement decisions for new medical technologies, drugs, devices or diagnostics. It can aid companies seeking to make claims about the cost-effectiveness of their product, as well as allowing early consideration of the economic value of therapies which may be important to improving initial adoption decisions. It is also vital for addressing the requirements of regulatory bodies. Economic Evaluation in Clinical Trials provides practical advice on how to conduct cost-effectiveness analyses in controlled trials of medical therapies. This new edition has been extensively rewritten and revised; topics discussed range from design issues such as the types of services that should be measured and price weights, to assessment of quality-adjusted life years. Illustrative materials, case histories and worked examples are included to encourage the reader to apply the methods discussed. These exercises are supported with datasets, programmes and solutions made available online.

This book provides an introduction to decision analytic cost-effectiveness modelling, giving the theoretical and practical knowledge required to design and implement analyses that meet the methodological standards of health technology assessment organisations. The book guides you through building a decision tree and Markov model and, importantly, shows how the results of cost-effectiveness analyses are interpreted. Given the complex nature of cost-effectiveness modelling and the often unfamiliar language that runs alongside it, we wanted to make this book as accessible as possible whilst still providing a comprehensive, in-depth, practical guide that reflects the state of the art – that includes the most recent developments in cost-effectiveness modelling. Although the nature of cost effectiveness modelling means that some parts are inevitably quite technical, across the 13 chapters we have broken down explanations of theory and methods into bite-sized pieces that you can work through at your own pace; we have provided explanations of terms and methods as we use them. Importantly, the exercises and online workbooks allow you to test your skills and understanding as you go along.

"This book provides a comprehensive overview of theory and practice in simulation systems focusing on major breakthroughs within the technological arena, with particular concentration on the accelerating principles, concepts and applications"--Provided by publisher.

"This is an excellent and well-written text on discrete event simulation with a focus on applications in Operations Research. There is substantial attention to programming, output analysis, pseudo-random number generation and modelling and these sections are quite thorough. Methods are provided for generating pseudo-random numbers (including combining such streams) and for generating random numbers from most standard statistical distributions." --ISI Short Book Reviews, 22:2, August 2002

Over the last decades Discrete Event Simulation has conquered many different application areas. This trend is, on the one hand, driven by an ever wider use of this technology in different fields of science and on the other hand by an incredibly creative use of available software programs through dedicated experts. This book contains articles from scientists and experts from 10 countries. They illuminate the width of application of this technology and the quality of problems solved using Discrete Event Simulation. Practical applications of simulation dominate in the present book. The book is aimed to researchers and students who deal in their work with Discrete Event Simulation and which want to inform them about current applications. By focusing on discrete event simulation, this book can also serve as an inspiration source for practitioners for solving specific problems during their work. Decision makers who deal with the question of the introduction of discrete event simulation for planning support and optimization this book provides a contribution to the orientation, what specific problems could be solved with the help of Discrete Event Simulation within the organization.