Decision Science and Methods

The overall structure of decision making in medicine was laid out for us this week.  Key components include analysis of the problem, outlining alternatives, inclusion of predictive tools, and ultimately making a decision based on these methods.  Once this foundation is established, complexity can be added to each layer of the problem.  Some main points to consider in medical decision making are the characteristics of the patient (medical history, diagnosis, etc.), probabilities of future events, and the assignment of value to each factor in the analysis.  Construction of an accurate decision tree and a well-designed statistical analysis should accompany any major medical decision.  However, this type of decision analysis seems to be used more to develop guidelines for populations, rather than for use of the individual.  It will be interesting to see if there will be a shift toward more decision analysis for individual medical outcomes in the future. 

Posted by Annie