Decision Making in Health and Medicine - Integrating Evidence and Values (Broché)

Decision making in health care involves consideration of a complex set of diagnostic, therapeutic, and prognostic uncertainties. Medical therapies have side effects, surgical interventions may lead to complications, and diagnostic tests can produce misleading results. Furthermore, patient values and the use of resources must be considered. Decisions in clinical and health policy require careful weighing of risks and benefits and are commonly a trade-off between competing objectives : maximizing quality of life vs.
maximizing life expectancy vs. minimizing the resources required. This text takes a proactive, systematic, and rational approach to medical decision making. It covers basic concepts such as decision trees, Bayesian revision, receiver operating characteristic curves, and cost-effectiveness analysis ; as well as advanced topics such as Markov models, microsimulation, probabilistic sensitivity analysis, and value of information analysis.
It provides an essential resource for trainees and researchers involved in medical decision modeling, evidence-based medicine, clinical epidemiology, comparative effectiveness, public health, health economics, and health technology assessment. Additional resources can be found at www.cambridge.org/9781107690479.