Tag: Health

Quarterly virtual social hour for the Health Policy SIG group (as requested by SIG membership at ISDC 2023!)

Tentative Agenda:
1) Update regarding potential website improvements & various SIG resources
2) SIG members share research interests
3) Breakout rooms for further discussion (as needed)

ABSTRACT: This work deals with the development of a system dynamics model for prevalence, prevention, and control of diabetes in Varanasi. The model was developed to explain the growth of diabetes since 2017 and portray possible future through 2050. The model simulations suggest characteristic dynamics of the diabetes population, including unintended increases in diabetes prevalence due to diabetes control, the inability of diabetes control efforts alone to reduce diabetes-related deaths in the long-term, and significant delays between prevention effort and improvement in diabetes outcomes.
The simulation model gives the prevalence of diabetes in Varanasi for the years 2030 as 0.52 million and 35.64 %. The study suggests involving 520 specialized doctors for management of diabetes in the city to achieve a ratio of one doctor per thousand population. The research examines the effect of the control efforts by using a ramped increase in the key performance variable over ten years.
The results conclude that despite the proposed policy measures the diagnosed diabetes population will decrease while undiagnosed diabetes population will increase and then decrease. Total population suffering from diabetes will increase irrespective of the policy measures, hence only option before policymakers is to tackle diabetes at prediabetes stage and make preventive and curative healthcare available at affordable cost. The method suggested by the study can be easily adapted for developing similar models for other chronic diseases like Asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Tuberculosis.

SPEAKER BIO: Dr. Vinaytosh Mishra is an Associate Professor for Healthcare Management (Management, Digital Health, and Heath Analytics) at the College of Healthcare Management and Economics, Gulf Medical University, Ajman (UAE). Dr. Mishra has done his engineering and Ph.D. from the prestigious India Insititute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi. He has more than 16 years of experience in industries like Healthcare, EdTech, Finance, and Information Technology. He is also a mentor for leading business incubators in India and UAE and a domain expert for AI implementation with Al Hathboor Bikal.ai, UAE.
Dr. Vinaytosh Mishra has published in journals of international repute (ABDC/Scopus/SSCI) and served as an editorial board member of reputed journals such as Hospital Topics, Frontiers in Digital Health, and Abhigyan. He also has an international patent in the field of image processing and NLP-based innovative solution in healthcare. His research interests include Digital Transformation, Healthcare Management, Health Economics, Healthcare Supply Chains, Complex Adaptive Systems, Healthcare Systems, and Digital Health.

TITLE: A systems approach to children’s health in Least Developed Countries

ABSTRACT: There are 46 countries classified as ‘Least Developed’, where poverty, food insecurity and violence are part of everyday life. Life expectancy is 20 years less than in rich countries and education levels are low. Two thirds of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are in sub-Saharan Africa.
If we want to improve the prospects of the poorest people on earth, children’s health is a good place to start. For children in LDCs, their chances of surviving childhood and thriving into adulthood are affected by the absence of things we take for granted; nourishing food, clean air, clean water and sanitation, access to basic health services and schooling. These factors all combine to affect children’s health and wellbeing in a complex reinforcing system.
LDCs have seen improvements in core measures of children’s health status such as infant death rates over the last 50 years but this has now plateaued, despite continuing efforts through aid programmes.
To understand the children’s health ‘system’ in LDCs, I developed a mental model (CLD). This was refined after visiting Solomon Islands, a remote LDC in the Western Pacific. From this I created a dynamic model and calibrated it (with difficulty) for Solomon Islands, to enable experimentation with different aid policy scenarios. There were many challenges; the biggest one being inaccurate and unavailable data. Uncertainty was reduced by building a small Bayesian Network as a comparator. Whilst the resulting model has many flaws, it is the first attempt to create a systems view of children’s health in LDCs and it shows how modelling can be useful, even with limited data. The scenarios produced some surprising and counter-intuitive results.
The presentation will briefly cover children’s health issues in Least Developed Countries. It will touch on the siloed thinking of current approaches to children’s health and will take a look at the models and key insights from the work. It will also show the user interface developed with policy makers in mind, which allows them to see the effects of different investments in children’s health.

BIO: Claire is a ‘mature’ PhD student with a few career changes behind her. Her first ‘real’ job was working for IBM in the UK as a software developer. 20 years later she migrated to Australia with a resume which claimed ‘IT executive’. It was in Queensland that she first became involved with the health sector, setting up IT call centres and digitising health systems. In 2008 she started a consultancy business and offered both project rescue services (digging projects out of holes) and IT governance advice (how to avoid the holes). In 2014 she embarked on a Master of Public Health degree, which opened her eyes to the health challenges which developing countries face. Somehow, this led to a PhD entitled ‘Children’s Environmental Health in Least Developed Countries: a modelling approach to support policy decisions’. Systems dynamics became the core of the PhD but it took a year of investigation before she understood how she could use it in her research. The PhD is almost finished and she is hoping to use the results for good. Claire is a Fellow both of the Australian Computer Society and the Australian Institute of Company Directors.