Using simulation to incorporate dynamic criteria into multiple criteria decision-making

In this paper, we present a case study demonstrating how dynamic and uncertain criteria can be incorporated into a multicriteria analysis with the help of discrete event simulation. The simulation guided multicriteria analysis can include both monetary and non-monetary criteria that are static or dynamic, whereas standard multi criteria analysis only deals with static criteria and cost benefit analysis only deals with static monetary criteria. The dynamic and uncertain criteria are incorporated by using simulation to explore how the decision options perform. The results of the simulation are then fed into the multicriteria analysis. By enabling the incorporation of dynamic and uncertain criteria, the dynamic multiple criteria analysis was able to take a unique perspective of the problem. The highest ranked option returned by the dynamic multicriteria analysis differed from the other decision aid techniques.

Supervised Adverse Drug Reaction Signalling Framework Imitating Bradford Hill's Causality Considerations

Big longitudinal observational medical data potentially hold a wealth of information and have been recognised as potential sources for gaining new drug safety knowledge. Unfortunately there are many complexities and underlying issues when analysing longitudinal observational data. Due to these complexities, existing methods for large-scale detection of negative side effects using observational data all tend to have issues distinguishing between association and causality. New methods that can better discriminate causal and non-causal relationships need to be developed to fully utilise the data. In this paper we propose using a set of causality considerations developed by the epidemiologist Bradford Hill as a basis for engineering features that enable the application of supervised learning for the problem of detecting negative side effects. The Bradford Hill considerations look at various perspectives of a drug and outcome relationship to determine whether it shows causal traits. We taught a classifier to find patterns within these perspectives and it learned to discriminate between association and causality. The novelty of this research is the combination of supervised learning and Bradford Hill's causality considerations to automate the Bradford Hill's causality assessment. We evaluated the framework on a drug safety gold standard know as the observational medical outcomes partnership's nonspecified association reference set. The methodology obtained excellent discriminate ability with area under the curves ranging between 0.792-0.940 (existing method optimal: 0.73) and a mean average precision of 0.640 (existing method optimal: 0.141). The proposed features can be calculated efficiently and be readily updated, making the framework suitable for big observational data.