CAN*TROL: a computer model for designing national cancer control strategies

Planning national and regional cancer control strategies is difficult. At present, cancer experts and planners rely on global subjective judgment to estimate the effectiveness and cost of different programs, and to set priorities. The complexity of the problem makes this approach vulnerable to oversimplification and error. Computer models can be very powerful aids to planning, enabling decision makers to break a problem into parts for which data exist, and reconstructing the parts to estimate the effect of a virtually limitless variety of cancer control activities, on a large number of important clinical and economic outcomes. CAN*TROL has been developed to serve this need. CAN*TROL has been used in the U.S., Chile and India, and is scheduled for use in several other countries.