DESnets: A Graphical Representation for Discrete Event Simulation and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis

Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is used increasingly in medicine to determine whether the health benefit of an intervention worth economic cost. Discrete event simulation (DES) playing increasing role CEA thanks several advantages, such as possibility modeling time and heterogeneous populations. It usually implemented with general-purpose programming languages or commercial software packages. To our knowledge, no artificial intelligence technique has been applied DES for CEA. Our objective develop a graphical representation, algorithm, tool that allows non-programmers easily build models perform We present DESnets (discrete networks) new type probabilistic model inspired by influence diagrams, algorithm evaluating implementation OpenMarkov plug-in. are compared qualitatively empirically six alternative tools using running example about osteoporosis British National Institute Health Care Excellence (NICE). In experiments, allowed building typical declaratively. Its evaluation process ranked among most efficient. compare favorably terms ease use, expressive power, transparency, computational efficiency.