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COURSE: WinBUGS in Health Economic Evaluations
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Two Day Course
WinBUGS in Health Economic Evaluations
MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge, UK
3 and 4 December, 2008
http://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/bayescost/
* 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.
* 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.
Day 1: Wednesday 3 December, 10.00 to 17.15
1. Introduction to WinBUGS for Monte Carlo analysis: The Bayesian
paradigm. Prior distributions. Predictions. Introduction to
distributions to be used: beta, normal, uniform, gamma, log-normal,
Poisson. Forward sampling. Introduction to Monte Carlo (MC) in
WinBUGS. Inference on any functions of parameters.
2. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis in WinBUGS: Probabilistic
sensitivity analysis (PSA). Cost-effectiveness
plane. INB. CEACs. PSA in WinBUGS. Simple Markov models.
3. Introduction to MCMC in WinBUGS: Bayes theorem for learning from
data. Introduction to Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and WinBUGS.
4. Cost data: Different models. Model fit. Predictions. Inference on
mean. Sensitivity to tail-area assumptions.
Day 2: Thursday 4 December, 9.30 to 17.00
5. Cost-utility data: Bivariate posterior distributions. Baseline
adjustment. Subgroups.
6. Markov models: Estimating transition probabilities. Setting up a
Markov model in WinBUGS. Cost-effectiveness analysis. One step PSA.
7. Evidence synthesis in WinBUGS: Meta-analysis. Random
effects. Indirect comparisons. Synthesis of multiple sources of
evidence in Markov models. Quality weights. Model fit: DIC. Model
uncertainty and sensitivity to assumptions.
8. Advanced topic: Running WinBUGS with R:
OpenBUGS. R2WinBUGS. BRugs. CODA. Contour plots.
Course instructors
* Dr Chris Jackson (MRC Biostatistics Unit)
* Dr Richard Nixon (Novartis, Basel)
Costs: £150 (student), £260 (public sector), £500 (commercial)
http://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/bayescost/
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Christopher Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
Research Statistician, MRC Biostatistics Unit, Institute of Public
Health, Robinson Way, Cambridge, UK, CB2 0SR. +44 (1223) 330381
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