Usaquén-Perilla, S.P., Laura Valentina Bocanegra-Villegas and José Isidro García-Melo. 2023 "Point-of-Care Ultrasound (POCUS) Assessment, Including Learning Curve: Developing a Dynamic Simulation Model" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202305.1821.v1
Abstract
The accelerated pace with which new diagnostic possibilities are produced and the budget re-strictions of the healthcare sector require that the decision-making process of acquiring new technologies becomes systematic in nature. There are some methodologies such as the Health Technology Assessment (HTA) that encompasses technological domains, clinical effectiveness, patient safety, organizational and financial aspects, among others. However, these methods do not contemplate the learning curve (LC) which is a differential factor in operator-dependent technologies. An assessment model was conceived based on the assessment domains of the AdHopHTA project with the addition of LC. The model was validated and calibrated through System Dynamics (SD) and using as case study the assessment of Point-of-care Ultrasound (POCUS) equipment in dengue screening. The model helped identify the influence of the LC and patient demand on the income and costs for the healthcare system regarding dengue screening as well as the cost-benefit indicator. The control charts LC-CUSUM and CUSUM are graphic tools to intuitively assess the learning curve which can be used for real-time monitoring once students reach a certain skill level.
Keywords
System dynamics; Health Technology Assessment (HTA); Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS); dengue
Subject
Engineering, Bioengineering
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
