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Discrete Event Simulation-Based Resource Modelling in Health Technology Assessment

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Abstract

Objective

The objective of this article was to conduct a systematic review of published research on the use of discrete event simulation (DES) for resource modelling (RM) in health technology assessment (HTA). RM is broadly defined as incorporating and measuring effects of constraints on physical resources (e.g. beds, doctors, nurses) in HTA models.

Methods

Systematic literature searches were conducted in academic databases (JSTOR, SAGE, SPRINGER, SCOPUS, IEEE, Science Direct, PubMed, EMBASE) and grey literature (Google Scholar, NHS journal library), enhanced by manual searchers (i.e. reference list checking, citation searching and hand-searching techniques).

Results

The search strategy yielded 4117 potentially relevant citations. Following the screening and manual searches, ten articles were included. Reviewing these articles provided insights into the applications of RM: firstly, different types of economic analyses, model settings, RM and cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) outcomes were identified. Secondly, variation in the characteristics of the constraints such as types and nature of constraints and sources of data for the constraints were identified. Thirdly, it was found that including the effects of constraints caused the CEA results to change in these articles.

Conclusion

The review found that DES proved to be an effective technique for RM but there were only a small number of studies applied in HTA. However, these studies showed the important consequences of modelling physical constraints and point to the need for a framework to be developed to guide future applications of this approach.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all of those who contributed to this work. In addition, the corresponding author (SS) would like to thank Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA) for sponsoring this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Regent Court, 30 Regent Street, Sheffield, S1 4DA, UK

    Syed Salleh, Praveen Thokala, Alan Brennan, Ruby Hughes & Simon Dixon

Authors
  1. Syed Salleh
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  2. Praveen Thokala
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  3. Alan Brennan
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  4. Ruby Hughes
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  5. Simon Dixon
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Contributions

The study idea originated from PT and SD, which was further developed in discussions with SS, and finalised in communication with all authors. SS coordinated the data collection and interpretation, which was agreed among all authors. SS and PT wrote the initial draft, with all authors contributing to the submitted version and also revising the manuscript based on reviewers’ comments. SS is the overall guarantor for the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Syed Salleh.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Majlis Amanah Rakyat (MARA).

Conflict of interest

Syed Salleh, Praveen Thokala, Alan Brennan, Ruby Hughes and Simon Dixon declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Appendix 1

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Salleh, S., Thokala, P., Brennan, A. et al. Discrete Event Simulation-Based Resource Modelling in Health Technology Assessment. PharmacoEconomics 35, 989–1006 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40273-017-0533-1

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