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Decision modelling for health economic evaluation
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Edited by Andrew Briggs, Mark Sculpher and Karl Claxton. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, £24.95, pp 237. ISBN 10: 0-19-852662-8, ISBN 13: 978-0-19-852662-9, 37 figures and 33 tables.
Economists are great model builders. Studying human behaviour has taught them to rely on assumptions (prior beliefs) and to use sophisticated mathematics and statistical techniques to reach outcomes (posteriors). In clinical trials the researcher is often restricted by instrumental precision (priors) and applies statistical techniques to reach scientific breakthroughs (posteriors). However, in a world of finite resources, it is inevitable that there has to be a limit on the number of trials that can be carried …