A paper released today by Dr Henry Cutler, Director of Macquarie University Centre for the Health Economy (MUCHE), analyses the value of current treatment and funding decision models.

Given patients, clinicians, providers and government find it difficult to process large volumes of complex information the paper raises an important question - is more information valuable, or will value be lost in the sea of complexity that already characterises our health system?

Titled, "The Value of Health Information", the paper cites the complexity of diagnosis and treatment, individual physician preferences, unobservable patient characteristics and unknown disease impacts among the many variables to patient outcomes.

Dr Cutler argues that health economists, such as those working at the Centre for the Health Economy, have been exploring the value of conducting further research to inform healthcare decisions using a method called value of information analysis.  This method uses statistical decision theory to estimate the benefit of a decision from collecting additional information compared with a decision made using existing information. Then, after subtracting the cost of conducting the additional research, the net value of additional information is estimated.

Read online Link to paper

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