Middle East Technical University

Department of Industrial Engineering

IE 492 - DECISION MAKING IN HEALTH CARE

Spring 2017

Instructor: Sakine Batun (Office: IE 333, E-mail: sakine@metu.edu.tr)

Class Meeting: Mondays 13:40 16:30, IE 301
Prerequisite: Knowledge of basic probability theory and operations research techniques is required.
Course Web Page: Go to https://odtuclass.metu.edu.tr/ and login. If you are on the roster, IE 492 will be
listed as one of your courses; click on it to have access to course material.

Reference Books:
Drummond, M.E., OBrien, B., Stoddart, G.L., and Torrance, G.W., Methods for the Evaluation of Health Care
Programmes, Oxford Medical Publications, 2005.
Gold, M.R., Siegel, J.E., Russell, L.B., and Weinstein, M.C., Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, Oxford
University Press, 1996.
Hunink, M.G.M., Glasziou, P.P., Siegel, J.E., Weeks, J.C., Pliskin, J.S., Elstein, A.S., and Weinstein, M.C.,
Decision Making in Health and Medicine: Integrating Evidence and Values , Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Brandeau, M.L., Sainfort, F., and Pierskalla, W.P. (Eds.), Operations Research and Health Care: A Handbook of
Methods and Applications, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.

Tentative Course Outline:

Introduction
Economic evaluation of healthcare interventions
Basic types of economic evaluation
Components and mechanics of cost-effectiveness analysis
Identifying and valuing health outcomes
Measuring costs
Sensitivity analysis
Decision analytic modeling in healthcare
Decision trees
Value of information
Sensitivity analysis
Dynamic models
IE/OR applications in healthcare
Introduction to decision making under uncertainty
o Markov Decision Processes
o Stochastic Programming
Healthcare operations
Public health problems
Clinical applications

Grading: Course grade will be based on assignments (15%-20%), in-class exercises and quizzes (15%-20%),
and two exams (midterm (30%) and final (35%)). Assignments may include problem sets, cases, reading
assignments, in-class presentations/discussions. Most of the time, in-class exercises and quizzes will be
unannounced.