Online Cost-Effectiveness ANalysis (OCEAN): a user-friendly interface to conduct cost-effectiveness analyses for cervica
- PDF / 1,184,169 Bytes
- 7 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 98 Downloads / 210 Views
(2020) 20:211
SOFTWARE
Open Access
Online Cost-Effectiveness ANalysis (OCEAN): a user-friendly interface to conduct costeffectiveness analyses for cervical cancer David Moriña1,2,3* , José Ignacio Martí4, Pedro Puig1,2 and Mireia Diaz4,5
Abstract Background: Most cost-effectiveness analyses in the context of cervical cancer prevention involve the use of mathematical models to simulate HPV infection, cervical disease and prevention strategies. However, it is common for professionals who would need to perform these analyses to not be familiar with the models. This work introduces the Online Cost-Effectiveness ANalysis tool, featuring an easy-to-use web interface providing health professionals, researchers and decision makers involved in cervical cancer prevention programmes with a useful instrument to conduct complex cost-effectiveness analyses, which are becoming an essential tool as an approach for supporting decision-making that involves important trade-offs. Results: The users can run cost-effectiveness evaluations of cervical cancer prevention strategies without deep knowledge of the underlying mathematical model or any programming language, obtaining the most relevant costs and health outcomes in a user-friendly format. The results provided by the tool are consistent with the existing literature. Conclusions: Having such a tool will be an asset to the cervical cancer prevention community, providing researchers with an easy-to-use instrument to conduct cost-effectiveness analyses. Keywords: Cervical cancer screening, Markov chain model, Cost-effectiveness, Online tool, cancer prevention, Decision making
Background Health care resources are scarce and therefore, their efficient allocation is a priority for policy-makers. To guide the process of decision making in this context, costeffectiveness analysis is an essential tool. When the available prevention strategies are multiple and potentially synergic, as occurs in the context of cervical cancer, cost-effectiveness analysis becomes critical to ensure the optimal allocation of resources [1].
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Barcelona Graduate School of Mathematics (BGSMath), Barcelona, Spain 2 Departament de Matemàtiques, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Cerdanyola del Vallès, 08193 Barcelona, Spain Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Cervical cancer and other cancer and noncancer diseases are caused by or related to human papillomavirus (HPV), a common sexually transmitted infection [2]. In fact, it is estimated that more than 80% of sexually active men and women will acquire an HPV infection by age 45 years [3]. HPV infections are asymptomatic in most cases, although some can lead to the formation of cervical abnormalities called cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), which can lead to cervical cancer. This cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers among women worldwide, especially in less developed countries [4]. Cervical cancer can be prevented by means of screening to find precancerous lesions (sec
Data Loading...
