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Project status: Active, several ongoing projects and analyses.

In 2006, the Osteoarthritis Policy (OAPol) team, led by Elena Losina, PhD, MSc, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and funded by the National Institute of Health (NIAMS), began building and validating a state-transition Monte Carlo computer simulation model to evaluate the epidemiologic factors that affect knee osteoarthritis (OA), such as obesity and knee injury, the impact the disease has on subjects’ quality of life and lifetime medical costs, and the cost-effectiveness of various knee OA treatments.

The model tracks every individual’s clinical course from the time of entry into the model to death, incorporating comorbidities, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other musculoskeletal diseases, and traumatic knee injuries, such as anterior cruciate ligament and meniscal tears. The model then outputs population-level data, including our primary outcome measures: average quality-adjusted life expectancy and lifetime medical costs.

We work with a scientific advisory board of expert clinicians, epidemiologists, and modelers, both nationally and internationally, to validate and refine our modeling approach and our derivation of data as input parameters for the model.

For further information, please see our NIH grant abstract.

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