Dr. Niki Popper represents DEXHELPP at the UKSim-AMSS 19th International Conference on Modelling & Simulation at Cambridge University (Emmanuel College), 5 - 7 April 2017 with a keynote on "Big Data and System Simulation for Analysis and Decision Support in Health Care Systems".
Abstract:
National health systems invest annually more billions of Euros (or Dollars). While the demand for health services increases (as a result of demographic change), the resources are limited. This creates a need for the development of new methods, models and technologies in order to support the analysing, planning and controlling of health care systems. Up to now decision support in health care systems is mainly based on the evidence of studies, that have a smaller range and not on the analysis of big data sets. But quantity and quality of available data strongly increases and therefore facilitates the description and analysis of all areas in health care systems.
To provide state of the art Health Technology Assessment (HTA), Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) and Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) we will need to combine health system domain knowledge, knowledge of professional data processes and, last but not leas, mathematical modelling & simulation skills. The areas of data security & data management, big data analysis, machine and deep learning, statistical methods, mathematical modelling & simulation and visualisation as well as public health & decision analytics modelling should help us to transform Big Data into Deep D ata: evidence based, reproducible knowledge.
To bring together all technologies still is a huge challenge. Data Based Demographic models have to be combined with analysis and models for the spreading of diseases. Time dependent treatment paths have to be parametrized with data sets from clinical routine joined with large scale health system data. From the system simulation point of view an important aspect is the possibility to implement changes inside the system, like interventions inside the computer model, and to analyse their effects. N. Popper tries to point out how big interdisciplinary teams will handle the complex processes in the future and which methods are and arenot promising.