Picking your brains: a DSS for neurosurgery

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Description/Abstract

This research involves the construction of a decision support system (DSS) to assist clinical managers in costing and contracting in the new internal market for neurosurgery in the UK National Health Service. The research requires the use of a novel method to collect detailed patient costing data. This data is used to build up profiles of 'similar' patients for contracting purposes using clustering techniques. The clusters are employed in a simple DSS to evaluate and simulate the effects of cost and activity changes under different contracting scenarios. The detailed data allows further uses in clinical audit, outcome studies and macro-level health policy analysis