Society for Medical Decision Making

Your feedback is requested!

Dependent Care Scholarships are also available and can be applied for using this application, sent to info@SMDM.org.

November 9, 10-1:30 ET

This course will cover the basics of metamodeling using R software. Its added value, and the practical steps for developing and applying metamodels will be discussed and demonstrated. This includes the identification of metamodeling techniques, simulation of data for metamodel training/testing, metamodel fitting/validation, use of a metamodel for optimization, and result verification. A single case study is used in several hands-on exercises, using metamodels to optimize a screening program. R is used for all exercises and ready-to-use scripts are provided, to apply the presented concepts in practice.

December 13, 10-1:30 ET

Cohort state transition models (cSTM), often called Markov models, are frequently used to inform policy makers about how to allocate healthcare resources under constrained budgets. In thiscourse we will teach participants how to integrate different components of a cSTM within a single framework using R. We will first give a conceptual overview of cSTMs and the general structure for their implementation in a programming language. This will be followed by a brief review of good coding practices and how to structure your code in an efficient, transparent and reproducible way. We will demonstrate a cSTM in R, followed by hands-on exercises that will help participants implement a cSTM in R. We will also demonstrate how to conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis(CEA)and how to calculate and visually present epidemiological and health economic outcomes using the cSTM. We will shortly cover the implementation of probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA)of a cSTM in R.