Balancing costs and benefits in cancer therapy and prevention

Balancing costs and benefits in cancer therapy and prevention.

In an era of increasing cost containment in health care, it has become extremely important to allocate resources as efficiently as possible. This implies that formal health economic considerations are taken into account. One field of increasing importance is that of economic appraisal, which allows quantifying the value for money of medical interventions. This type of research is extremely usef...

Trade-offs in cervical cancer prevention: balancing benefits and risks.

BACKGROUND New screening and vaccination technologies will provide women with more options for cervical cancer prevention. Because the risk of cervical cancer diminishes with effective routine screening, women may wish to consider additional attributes, such as the likelihood of false-positive results and diagnostic procedures for mild abnormalities likely to resolve without intervention in the...

Clinical Governance: Costs and Benefits

Balancing the Costs and Benefits of Learning Ability

We study the costs and benefits of plasticity by evolving agents in environments with different rates of environmental change. Evolution allows both hard-coded strategies and learned strategies, with learning rates varying throughout life. We observe a range of change rates where the balance of costs and benefits are just right for evolving learning. Inside this range, we see two separate strat...

clinical governance: costs and benefits