BACKGROUND Preventive measures are essential to limit the spread of new viruses; their uptake is key to their success. However, the vaccination uptake in pandemic outbreaks is often low. We aim to elicit how disease and vaccination characteristics determine preferences of the general public for new pandemic vaccinations. METHODS In an internet-based discrete choice experiment (DCE) a represen...

AIM This study was designed to capture patient preferences for different aspects of asthma treatment from people with asthma in the UK, the Netherlands and Spain. METHODS Asthma patients from the UK (n=124), the Netherlands (n=269) and Spain (n=86) participated in the survey. Patients' preferences and willingness to pay for a particular number of preventer inhalers, in relation to days per we...

OBJECTIVES An increasing emphasis on patient-centred health care and shared decision making requires an intensive consideration of patient preferences. In the present study, patient preferences regarding treatment of HIV/AIDS were explored using direct assessment and discrete choice experiment (DCE). METHODS Based on literature research about preferences of HIV/AIDS patients we conducted a qu...

nonlinear knapsack problems (nkp) are the alternative formulation for the multiple-choice knapsack problems. a powerful approach for solving nkp is dynamic programming which may obtain the global op-timal solution even in the case of discrete solution space for these problems. despite the power of this solu-tion approach, it computationally performs very slowly when the solution space of the pr...

This study explores the effects of Interferon-β characteristics such as country of origin, injection frequency and method, monthly cost, efficacy, and side effects on multiple-sclerosis patients’ willingness to pay. For this purpose, MS patients with a history of using Interferon-β were studied from the three major Isfahan MS centers. Choice sets were designed with a combination of attributes a...

BACKGROUND Bacterial and fungal infections in pediatric oncology patients cause morbidity and mortality. The clinical utility of antimicrobial prophylaxis in children is uncertain and the personal utility of these agents is disputed. Objectives were to use a discrete choice experiment to: (1) describe the importance of attributes to parents and healthcare providers when deciding between use and...