Differential Discounting
Differential discounting applies a lower annual discount rate to future health effects, such as QALYs, than to future costs in an economic evaluation.
Encyclopaedia
Explore comprehensive, evidence-informed explanations of key health economics concepts, including their development, application and relationships to other concepts. Published entries are validated through human expert review.
Concepts, entries and ontology terms
A concept page is a published entry on the wiki. Some concepts also have a full encyclopaedia article. The Health Economics Ontology (HEO) holds every concept, including dictionary terms without an article, so it is larger than the list of published pages. The knowledge graph shows how concepts relate to each other.
Differential Pricing
Differential pricing is charging different prices for the same patented medicine in different markets, typically lower where ability to pay is lower.
Diffusion
Diffusion in health economics is the spread of a new technology's use among eligible patients and providers over time, shaping costs and health gains.
Diminishing Marginal Utility
Diminishing marginal utility is the economic principle that each extra unit of a good adds less utility than the last, so the rich will pay more for care.
Diminishing Returns
Diminishing returns is the eventual fall in extra health from each added unit of care, such as another screening round, when other inputs stay fixed.
Direct Cost
Direct cost is a cost traced to a service or patient or, in economic evaluation, resources used for care or due to illness, such as medicines and travel.
Dirichlet Distribution
The Dirichlet distribution is a multivariate distribution for proportions that sum to one, used for uncertain transition probabilities from a model state.
Discount Factor
A discount factor is the weight below 1 that multiplies a cost or health effect in a future year to give its present value in economic evaluation.
Discount Rate
The discount rate is the annual rate, such as NICE's 3.5%, used in economic evaluation to convert future costs and health outcomes into present values.
Discounting
Discounting converts future costs and health effects, such as QALYs, into present values so that options with different timings can be compared.
Discrete Choice Experiment
A discrete choice experiment (DCE) is a survey where people choose between hypothetical health care options described by attributes, to measure trade-offs.
Discrete Data
Discrete data are values that can only be counted in whole steps, such as the number of hospital admissions, GP visits or exacerbations per patient.
Discrete Event Simulation
Discrete event simulation (DES) is a modelling method that follows each patient from event to event over time, tracking their history and use of resources.
Discrete Model
A discrete model represents at least one aspect of a system through distinct states, events, or time steps, allowing changes to be analysed as transitions among those elements rather than solely as continuously varying quantities.
Distribution Fitting
Distribution fitting is choosing a probability distribution for a health economic model input, such as a cost or event time, and estimating its parameters.
Distributional Cost-Effectiveness
Distributional cost-effectiveness analysis (DCEA) is an economic evaluation showing who gains and loses health from a policy and its effect on inequality.
Distributional Weight
A distributional weight is a multiplier in cost-benefit analysis that values health policy gains and losses by who gets them, usually favouring the poor.
Dominance
Dominance in cost-effectiveness analysis excludes an option when another option, or a blend of two others, is no worse on cost or effect and better on one.
Dominance Analysis
Dominance analysis drops health care options beaten on cost and health effect by another option or a blend of two, so ICERs compare only efficient ones.
Dose Response
Dose response is the relationship between the amount of a drug or exposure and the size or probability of its effect, used in dose selection and HTA.