We became aware only today that the Operational Research Society awarded the Griffith Medal 2020 to a paper presented by Terry Young, Sada Soorapanth, Jim Wilkerson, Lance Millburg, Todd Roberts and David Morgareidge which demonstrates that modelling can make powerful contributions to shaping the design of health care systems, improving their cost-effectiveness to an extent that can hugely outweigh the costs of the modelling.
The article, entitled “The costs and value of modelling-based design in healthcare delivery: five case studies from the US” poses two questions:
- How far along the trajectory followed by other sectors has healthcare come?
- What progress has been made in articulating the value-for-money case?
The analysis helps redress both those problems by analysing the costs of modelling and the savings resulting from a number of healthcare management decisions that were based on simulation results.
Our coordinator, Professor Marco Viceconti, commented on this: “We are so focused on Digital Twins and In Silico Trials that sometimes we forget the many other ways computer modelling can impact healthcare.”
The Griffiths Medal is awarded in recognition of the most outstanding contribution to the philosophy, theory or practice of health systems published in the journal Health Systems within the relevant period.
