> Research and Development
> Engineering, Manufacturing
and Petroleum Applications
> Pharmaceutical Marketing
and Sales
> Insurance Companies
> New Tools for the Medical
Profession
Research and Development
With the help of decision analysis software, R&D decision makers
can model complex product development decisions, capturing the interrelated
uncertainties of cost, timing, success, competition, market size,
market share, ROI and so forth. Using TreeAge Pro Interactive, a designer
can develop and store a standard R&D decision model on a central
server, creating a new iteration of the model for each proposed project.
The company's research scientists, project managers and financial
analysts around the world can then perform analyses with these models,
using different assumptions to model different scenarios. Results
of analyses and trends can be tracked over time, making sure that
projects stay on schedule, are within budget, and/or remain above
a specified hurdle rate of return. TreeAge Pro Interactive could thus
be used to ensure more intelligent product development decisions and
capital budgeting decisions among multiple projects.
Engineering, Manufacturing and Petroleum Applications
Engineering, manufacturing and petroleum exploration companies face
recurring but highly complex decision problems that could benefit
from decision analytic modeling. Often, however, this approach is
impossible due to lack of time or expertise. TreeAge Pro Interactive
eliminates these constraints. Using TreeAge Pro Interactive, developers
can model decision problems in generic form and allow decision makers
to access these models dynamically over the intranet. Engineers and
managers in the field could feed TreeAge Pro into the system via a
simple, browser-based form and receive tailored recommendations and
sensitivity analyses on the spot.
Pharmaceutical Marketing and Sales
Pharmaceutical sales forces are increasingly committed to demonstrating
the superior cost-effectiveness of their products to potential customers.
Only computer-based tools, rather than printed sales materials, can
take customer-specific costs and outcomes into account. Accordingly,
a number of pharmaceutical companies have commissioned custom-designed
systems (using spreadsheets or programming languages such as BASIC
or C++) for use by their sales representatives in the field. These
models can be expensive and time-consuming to build, as well as inflexible
and difficult to use. TreeAge Pro Interactive allows developers to
quickly build and distribute powerful applications that offer a simple
interface, superior graphics, and better output than custom-designed
systems, especially when the company's pharmacoeconomic research department
has already built the relevant model in TreeAge Pro.
Insurance Companies
Insurance companies want to reduce the cost of litigation by developing
speedy, fair assessments of the value of filed claims. Statistically,
over 90% of all civil litigation is settled, but usually not until
most trial preparation costs have been incurred. Using TreeAge Pro
Interactive, companies can make sophisticated litigation models
accessible to claims administrators and outside lawyers to facilitate
earlier, less costly settlements. Applications can also be built to
help sales people and customers decide between competing options in
areas where policy values are in the tens or hundreds of millions
of dollars.
New Tools for the Medical Profession: Providing State of the Art Practice
Guidelines
TreeAge Pro Interactive is an effective tool for delivering real-time
decision analyses and cost-effectiveness analyses to clinicians at
the point of care - helping to improve treatment outcomes and increase
the consistency of care while containing healthcare costs.
Whether distributed on paper or via electronic media, the practice
guidelines currently in common use by hospitals, managed care organizations
and other healthcare providers are essentially static. TreeAge Pro
Interactive provides healthcare researchers and managers with a tool
for furnishing clinicians with a new breed of interactive and dynamic
clinical practice guidelines that:
- take into account patient- and population-specific circumstances
- can easily be made accessible at the point of care
- utilize existing technologies and TreeAge Pro sources
- can be easily updated to reflect current knowledge
From the Internet or an organization's intranet, the TreeAge Pro Interactive
application is available to any healthcare provider who must make real-time
clinical decisions, but who may lack expertise in the techniques of
decision analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis.
Here's how it works. The healthcare provider enters the requested information
about the patient into a user-friendly, on-screen form. Then, the TreeAge
Pro Interactive application evaluates the appropriate model and promptly
delivers a detailed report, including textual and graphical output.
When integrated into a clinical information system, a TreeAge Pro
Interactive application can give healthcare providers real-time access
to detailed health outcomes and cost-effectiveness information - knowledge
that is increasingly necessary for informed medical decision making.
TreeAge Pro Interactive also makes it possible to automate the updating
of clinical practice guidelines. By linking TreeAge Pro models to
electronic medical records (EMR) systems (as well as other types of
TreeAge Probases), you can ensure that treatment recommendations remain
appropriate as updated outcomes, cost and other information become
available. Depending on the comprehensiveness of the EMR system, the
clinician may be able to avoid manually entering patient-specific
in TreeAge Pro altogether.
The concept of dynamic decision-analytic guidelines has been actively
explored by the federal Agency for Health Care Policy and Research
(AHCPR) and various academic institutions. Among the systematic benefits
of using TreeAge Pro Interactive to implement such guidelines are:
- improved quality of medical care
- increased rate of physician compliance with practice guidelines
- reduced administrative costs associated with noncompliance
- decreased costs and adverse health consequences of sub-optimal
treatment decisions
A Sample Configuration
In a typical situation, TreeAge Pro is installed on a healthcare provider's
intranet, along with a group of decision models developed, commissioned
or purchased by the healthcare provider. The models are linked to
databases for both costs and outcomes research. When a physician orders
a particular treatment (such as a drug, procedure or diagnostic test),
the physician's order, the patient's medical record, and relevant
costs and outcomes will automatically be funneled to the server. Utilizing
patient-specific values, TreeAge Pro Interactive will then analyze
the cost-effectiveness of the proposed treatment, as well as alternative
procedures, and generate a recommended course of action together with
supporting analyses.
Because of the dynamic, interactive nature of the analysis, the treating
physician can have confidence that any recommendation generated by
the computerized pathway will have taken into account the patient's
specific circumstances - a virtual impossibility with the static practice
guidelines in use today.