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Statistical methods in microsimulation – a systematic review of models for lung cancer (306786)
*Stavroula Chrysanthopoulou, Brown UniversityKeywords: microsimulation, reporting practices, comparability, systematic review
Microsimulation models (MSMs), although widely used in medical research to describe the natural history of a disease, and assess the effect of interventions on health outcomes of interest, they do not have a standard way for developing and reporting results. The complicated structure renders MSM a “black box”, with unclear mechanics and underlying assumptions. We performed systematic review of reporting practices from MSMs used to describe lung cancer related outcomes, and reviewed articles based on the amount and level of detail of information provided regarding the development, purpose, main outcomes, and predictions reported. Most of the articles describe the calibration and validation methods but are lacking sufficient information to understand the assumptions and assess the performance of the model, while they provide only point estimates for model predictions without any measure of uncertainty. This review evinces the need for general guidelines to assist consistency and comparability of applications of MSMs in medical research.