Agent-Based modeling in Medical Research. Example in Health Economics
This work addresses modeling challenges in health economics for researchers and policymakers, but it is incremental as it reviews existing techniques and applies them to a specific case.
The chapter introduces agent-based modeling for medical research, focusing on simulating patient cohorts and exploring scenarios through parameter variation, with an application to evaluating the cost impact of generic HIV treatment penetration rates.
This chapter presents the main lines of agent based modeling in the field of medical research. The general diagram consists of a cohort of patients (virtual or real) whose evolution is observed by means of so-called evolution models. Scenarios can then be explored by varying the parameters of the different models. This chapter presents techniques for virtual patient generation and examples of execution models. The advantages and disadvantages of these models are discussed as well as the pitfalls to be avoided. Finally, an application to the medico-economic study of the impact of the penetration rate of generic versions of treatments on the costs associated with HIV treatment is presented.