WinBUGS in Health Economic Evaluations

WinBUGS in Health Economic Evaluations

28th & 29th October 2013 :: Cambridge

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Course Details

  • This course is intended to provide an introduction to Bayesian analysis and MCMC methods using WinBUGS, as applied to cost-effectiveness analysis and typical models used in health-economic evaluations.
  • The emphasis throughout will be on practical examples: software and code to carry out all the analyses will be provided. Participants are encouraged to bring their own laptops for the practicals.
  • We shall assume a basic knowledge of standard methods in health economics, and familiarity with a range of probability distributions, regression analysis, Markov models and random-effects meta-analysis.
  • No knowledge of WinBUGS will be assumed: however it will help you if you have previously downloaded the software and run the tutorial (Help > User Manual > Tutorial).

Day 1: Wednesday 3 October 2012, 10.00 to 17.15

On arrival Tea/Coffee
10.00 - 11.00 Introduction to WinBUGS for Monte Carlo analysis: The Bayesian paradigm - expressing uncertainty using probabilities. Overview of probability distributions for different types of quantity. Predicting data with uncertain parameters. Introduction to Monte Carlo sampling in WinBUGS. (Chris Jackson)
11.00 - 11.45 Practical: Monte Carlo in WinBUGS
11.45 - 12.00 Tea/Coffee
12.00 - 12.45 Probabilistic sensitivity analysis in WinBUGS: Probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA). Cost-effectiveness plane. Incremental net benefit. Cost-effectiveness acceptability curves (CEACs). PSA in WinBUGS. Simple Markov models. (Richard Nixon)
12.45 - 13.30 LUNCH
13.30 - 14.15 Practical: PSA in WinBUGS
14.15 - 15.00 Introduction to MCMC in WinBUGS: Bayes theorem for learning about parameters from observed data. Introduction to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and WinBUGS for estimating posterior distributions of parameters given data. (Chris Jackson)
15.00 - 15.15 Tea
15.15 - 16.00 Cost data: Parametric models for estimating expected cost. Advantages over transforming data / non-parametric methods. Model fit. Predictions. Inference on mean. Sensitivity to tail-area assumptions. (Richard Nixon)
16.00 - 17.15 Practical: MCMC and cost data

Day 2: Thursday 4 October 2012, 9.30 to 17.00

On arrival Tea/Coffee
9.30 - 10.30 Cost-utility data: Relating costs to effects using regression. Bivariate posterior distributions. Baseline adjustment. Subgroups. (Richard Nixon)
10.30 - 11.15 Practical: Cost-utility data
11.15 - 11.30 Tea/Coffee
11.30 - 12.15 Markov models: Estimating transition probabilities. One-stage Markov model fitting and probabilistic cost-effectiveness analysis in WinBUGS. Using posterior samples from WinBUGS in spreadsheet-based models. (Chris Jackson)
12.15 - 13.00 LUNCH
13.00 - 13.45 Practical: Markov models
13.45 - 14.45 Evidence synthesis in WinBUGS: Random-effects meta-analysis. Indirect and mixed treatment comparisons. Integrating evidence synthesis and Markov cost-effectiveness modelling. Model criticism and comparison, sensitivity to assumptions. (Chris Jackson)
14.45 - 15.00 Tea
15.00 - 16.00 Practical: Evidence synthesis
16.00 - 16.30 Advanced topic: Running WinBUGS with R: OpenBUGS. R2WinBUGS. BRugs. CODA. Contour plots. (Richard Nixon)
16.30 - 17.00 Optional practical