Two Day Course
WinBUGS in Health Economic Evaluations
MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge, UK
Wednesday 3, Thursday 4 October 2012
http://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/bayescost
* This course provides 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 is on practical examples: software and code
to carry out all the analyses will be provided.
* We assume a basic knowledge of standard methods in health economics,
and familiarity with basic statistics, probability distributions,
regression analysis, Markov models and random-effects meta-analysis.
* No knowledge of WinBUGS or Bayesian methods will be assumed.
Day 1: Wednesday 3 October, 10.00 to 17.15
1. 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.
2. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis in WinBUGS: Probabilistic
sensitivity analysis (PSA). Cost-effectiveness plane. Incremental
net benefit. Cost-effectiveness acceptability curves. PSA in
WinBUGS. Simple Markov models.
3. 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.
4. 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.
Day 2: Thursday 4 October, 9.30 to 17.00
5. Cost-utility data: Relating costs to effects using
regression. Bivariate posterior distributions. Baseline
adjustment. Subgroups.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Advanced topic: Running WinBUGS with R:
OpenBUGS. R2WinBUGS. BRugs. CODA. Contour plots.
Course instructors
* Dr Chris Jackson (MRC Biostatistics Unit, UK)
* Dr Richard Nixon (Novartis, Basel, Switzerland)
Costs: £150 (student), £260 (public sector), £500 (commercial)
For further information and registration, see
http://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/bayescost
--
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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