Model Validation: Has it's Time Come?

Abstract

In this issue of Pharmacoeconomics, De Boer et al. have reviewed the reporting of efforts to validate cost-effectiveness models in seasonal influenza and early breast cancer [5], while an earlier paper by Afzali and colleagues reviewed approaches to evaluate the performance of decision analytic models in cardiovascular disease [6]. [...]appropriate validation approaches can establish the applicability of the model structure to capture all important differences in costs and outcomes, assess the robustness of the expected value and sampling distribution of the model's input parameters, and confirm the absence of implementation errors.