MODELLING HEALTH AND HEALTHCARE DEMAND FOR AN AGEING POPULATION
Method(s): A literature review was conducted to identify all available documents relevant to the modelling of health and healthcare demand for an ageing population. Based on the results of the literature review, a modelling framework that can predict the healthcare demand of an ageing population was developed. The literature review helped inform decisions regarding the important components of the model for the estimation of healthcare demand for an ageing population, the key disease areas for the elderly and other major factors that may influence health care demand. The modelling framework was verified for coding errors and internal validation was also conducted.
Result(s): The review identified 7745 relevant studies; among them 2105 peer-reviewed papers were selected to be included and a further set of 158 articles from the grey literature were also identified. A freely available data repository of these 2263 (2105+158) articles was created and classified under a set of tags showing the main themes of these papers on healthcare demand of ageing population. There are a number of modelling frameworks available for predicting the health care demand of an ageing population, ranging from statistical models to micro-simulation. Given that the ageing population typically has multiple conditions (co-morbidities), a linked individual patient disease modelling approach was used. Cardiovascular disease, dementia and osteoporosis were identified as the key drivers of healthcare demand for ageing population and thus seperate individual patient simulation models for each of these conditions were developed. Each of these models was verified for coding errors and internal validation was also conducted to ensure that the model outputs match the data used in the model. These disease specifc models were then linked in a coherent modelling framework to take into account the causal effects and correlations between the co-morbidities.
Conclusion(s): Our flexible individual patient modelling framework with linked disease models is useful for predicting the health care demand of an ageing population. The framework provides the ability to model co-morbidities and can inform efficient planning of healthcare resources by the evaluation of a range of potential interventions and policy changes for ageing population.