COVID-19 HEOR Researcher Discusses Pandemic Modeling

May 17, 2021

Models predicting the impact of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical measures aimed at reducing the spread of COVID-19 have been developed throughout the pandemic. In a recent interview, Xcenda’s Senior Director of Global Health Economics Dr. Ken O’Day shares his thoughts on these modeling approaches, one year after the release of his whitepaper.

Dr. O’Day remarks, “Our model was on point in predicting the early course of the pandemic in terms of the number of US deaths—a grim source of validation, unfortunately,” adding, “In health economics, we don’t often get an opportunity to validate our model projections against reality. Modeling COVID allows you to test your model forecasts against cold hard reality as the COVID-19 Forecast Hub study shows. I think this study also highlights the potential benefits of simpler models—health economic models, in my opinion, are too often needlessly complex—and that we should also be more cautious about interpreting results from probabilistic sensitivity analyses, which likely underestimate uncertainty.” Read more here.