Economics of prostate cancer: a computer model

The economic impact of health care for prostate cancer represents a substantial and growing burden to Canadian society. To better allocate increasingly scarce health care resources will require a comprehensive understanding of the costs and benefits of specific diagnostic and therapeutic interventions to manage this disease. A detailed health economic model of prostate cancer care, currently under development, will be described in this article. Using a decision analytic approach we will integrate current clinical trial data, epidemiologic data of disease progression, and Canadian health care cost data to build a Markov model of prostate cancer care. The final model will support cost-effectiveness analyses to compare competing strategies for screening and treating patients with this disease.