Health Economics, Epidemiology, & Science Policy

Discrete Event Simulation

Discrete Event Simulation (DES) is a modeling technique that provides a more natural way to simulate clinical reality. This type of modeling simulates, in a straight forward and intuitive way, individuals experiencing the course that actual patients might have.

DES enjoys widespread acceptance in many industries. While it has only recently been applied to medicine, its ability to overcome many of the restrictions imposed by other methodologies as well as its acceptance from regulatory agencies has lead to an increasing number of analysts adopting the technique.

Why Use DES ?

• Represents clinical reality
• Presents the course of disease naturally with few restrictions
• Flexible: no mutually exclusive branches or states required
• Natural concept of time, the simulation clock keeps track of the passage of time (no fixed cycles)
• Flexibility handling perspectives & sensitivity analyses
• Transparent (eliminates the "black box")
• Allows queuing (e.g., if a health resource is not available at a given time)
• Allows modeling of limited resources, bottlenecks, if applicable to the problem
• Patients are explicit elements with specific attributes (e.g., sex, age, event history, etc.) that can be modified over time
• Variables can be updated continuously or at specific time periods

UBC provides:

Credibility
As the leading authority of DES applied to health economics, our staff has taught courses in the methodology & implementation of this modeling approach to researchers around the globe.

Innovation
In our continuing efforts to improve pharmacoeconomic methods, our staff introduced DES to the health economics community in 2000.

Expertise
By seeking out experts with proven DES skills, our researchers have amassed extensive experience developing models with this methodology.